Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Influences

She said nothing throughout the entire debate, (which wasn't even an argument, and part of her wished it had been). She said nothing when Magneto walked out, as they walked passed the lake and the grounds of the mansion. She stayed quiet right up until they were in the car, she was driving, and Magneto turned to her and said "Well?"

"What."

"Mystique, you've got your 'angry' look on. What are you thinking?"

Her expression didn't change. "Why did we walk out? Why was it us and not him?"

"Well." Magneto gave a small smile. "He was sitting down."

Xavier had been sitting down, smiling with that faintly annoying smile he had that always made her worry that he was snooping around inside her head. Magneto had stood in front of him, talking quietly, although he'd had a paperclip floating between his hands that had been twisting violently out of shape throughout the whole conversation.

"It was…" Magneto paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts, "It was his school really."

"You both built it."

"Yes, but he wanted it. I wanted a base, he wanted a school."

"So you built a school."

Magneto gave a small twisted smile, "Are you suggesting that Charles was the one with more power?"

Mystique said nothing but he didn't need to be a mind-reader to see her thoughts, written plainly on her face, of course I do Erik, we were the ones that walked out!

"We can make a base of our own." Magneto continued, glancing sideways to try and gauge her expression. "In that cave, near the cliffs."

"I'm sure parents will be dying to send their children there." She countered sarcastically. "You'll have an army to match Charles in no time."

"My dear, there are some depths to which even I would shudder to sink. I am not planning on using children. I prefer my … followers," She smirked but he continued, "to have already made up their minds. There are plenty of angry adults out there. Mutants have never been treated well."

She raised an eyebrow, "And you can trust these angry adults to choose the right thing?"

"Oh yes. Charles promises nothing except a place to hide. I can give them so much more."

"Uh…Professor?" Scott walked in, nervously twisting his shirt in his hands, his voice half-breaking in the beginnings of adolescence, "Um, I saw Magneto leave."

"Yes." Xavier said, frowning into the distance, just in time to see the car turn out of the mansion, leaving a trail of dust behind.

"He's gone?" Scott asked, half-confused, half-pleased. The Professor and Magneto had worked for a long time together, and he could never understand why when they seemed to have such radically different ideas. They'd argued throughout the building of the school, and almost continuously during the last two months since it had been completed.

"Yes." Xavier gave a sigh. "For now, at least."

Alvers. He'd only been at the orphanage for a week and suddenly his name was everywhere. Alvers was a 'problem child' he'd just come out of prison, they said. He smoked behind the sheds, he drove without a licence, he would do anything for a dare, they said he'd destroyed a garage, a whole garage.

Mortimer was curious. New children came quite often, passing through from foster homes, babies found abandoned, but coming straight out of prison, as in the case of Lance Alvers, was rare. Mortimer had heard about prison, and seeing as he'd already worked out that there was some kind of adult-borne conspiracy going on to hide the truth from him, wanted to find out what it was actually like.

He crouched down in the mud behind the sheds in what the orphanage optimistically referred to as a garden, waiting. It was late afternoon, the shadows were just stretching across the patch of moss and weeds that covered for a lawn, and the television aerials hummed with the late-afternoon sound of people settling down to do nothing. Mort rested his head against the side of the shed and listened with a happy smile to the distant yelling that told of someone else getting into trouble that had nothing to do with him.

"Hey Toady."

The smile vanished and he scowled wondering how someone who'd only been at the place for a week already knew his stupid nickname. "Hey."

Lance leant against the side of the shed and pulled out a battered home-rolled cigarette. Mort watched, fascinated, as he struck a match against the crumbling brickwork and lit it, inhaling deeply. For the first time, he felt the stirrings of a slight form of hero-worship. Lance didn't give a damn about anything, whereas Toad worried about everything. He wondered if he should try to get some rips in his jeans, like Lance.

"So, uh." Toad started, tensing himself for a quick getaway, "They say you came from prison?"

"Yep." Lance blew the smoke out over the wilting fuchsia bush and tried to look as tough as he could.

"Wow." Toad said softly. "What, what for?"

"Razed a garage."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"A whole garage?"

Lance frowned slightly in annoyance. "I didn't do it on purpose."

"You destroyed a garage…accidentally?"

Lance squinted down at him. "Hey Toady, you know what a mutant is, right?"

"No." He'd heard of the term, but hadn't quite understood it, or whether it related to him. He'd even been called it a couple of times, but there were plenty of things he'd been called (and that he'd called other people) that he didn't quite understand the meaning of. Mutant was just another word you got in trouble for saying.

"It's a freak. Someone weird. Someone different. Someone who can do things other people can't."

"Like this?" Eager to participate, he shot his tongue out, catching a fly resting on the side of the wall.

Lance turned slightly green, "Uh. That's gross."

Toad stared at the ground, feeling stupid.

"But yeah. That would be a mutant-thing. Hey Toady, that means you're a mutant too."

Too? Did he have something in common with this superior shining god-of-rebellion? "You, you're a …mutant?"

"Yep." He took another drag on the cigarette.

"What do you do?"

Lance gave a half shrug, "I screw up garages."

By his second week at the orphanage everyone knew that the cool tough Lance Alvers was hanging around with the geeky Toad-kid. It didn't make much sense to anyone, and it worried the teachers who tried to have serious talks with Mortimer about how hanging around with 'that sort of person' was bad for him.

Once again, their words baffled him. Lance was the only friend he'd had, the only person who treated him the same way they treated everyone else. Admittedly Lance treated everyone like they were just something he had to temporarily put up with, but it was nice to have some one to talk to and hang around with.

They said that Lance was a Bad Influence. Toad thought Lance was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He worshipped the older boy, and who cared if it got him into more trouble? He was usually in trouble anyway, getting detention for being found behind the bike sheds with someone who was smoking was nothing new.

And this time, the detention supervisor was late. Lance drummed his heals against the desk and then stood up. "Screw this Toady, c'mon, let's go."

"But…we'll miss detention."

"So? Spend enough of my life in this lousy place without wasting an evening."

It was a new concept for Toad. He was also finding that the previously hated nickname sounded different when Lance said it. More like a secret alibi than a stupid taunt. "We'll get into more trouble when they find out."

"Who cares. Let's go for a drive."

They sneaked out into the car park, where Toad eyed Lance's battered jeep with a worried sort of feeling in his stomach. "Are you allowed to drive?"

"Almost. I can drive, I just didn't get a licence yet. I will when I'm old enough." Lance swung himself into the drivers seat. "It's like drinking. You can drink at any age, it's just not official till you're eighteen. That's why I store the jeep in the school car-park. Everyone just thinks it belongs to one of the teachers."

"Oh." Not wanting to seem afraid, Toad pulled himself up onto the seat next to him. "Where should we go?"

"Out." Lance said, and revved up the engine.

Despite Toad's worries, it turned out that Lance was a good driver after all. They pulled out of London, down a few roads, along a ditch and the jeep stopped on the side of a track.

"C'mon. Here we are."

'Here' turned out to be a small hill, covered in grass that reached to Toad's knees. Lance reached the top and flopped down facing the sky with his hands behind his back, one knee raised. Toad sat down beside him.

"We can hide here Toady."

"Hide from what?"

"Everything else."

It was very peaceful. The distance hum of traffic mingled with the louder humming of nearby insects mixed in with the sweetish smell of dry grass and clover. The air was still and hot, only the occasional wisp of cloud brought relief with a small rustle of wind. Toad watched a ladybird clambering determinedly up a grass stalk, hanging on desperately as he made it sway with his foot.

"Last time I came up here it was raining." Lance murmured, his eyes closed.

"When was that?"

"About three years ago, when they took Liam away."

"Who's Liam?"

"My first foster-father. He was the one that taught me to drive. He needed it see, when we went out with all his mates and they got plastered. He needed me to drive him back."

Toad frowned. That didn't seem quite right with him, but Lance continued. "I loved it with Liam, he didn't care when I did bad at school, or when I got in trouble. His wife, Trish, she was cool too. Used to take me out to all those expensive clothes places, buy me loads of stuff. Shopping with Trish was awesome."

"Why did they take Liam away?" Toad asked. The world of foster-parents was a mysterious land that he'd never really experienced. Nobody wanted a green child. Part of him felt jealous of the children that got taken away, to stay with people who would look after them and care for them, but part of him was quite glad they never took him, because there were all sorts of horrifying rumours about what foster-parents were like.

"He got involved in stuff." Lance waved his hands vaguely, he wasn't certain just what stuff it was that his ex-foster-father had been doing, except that it had made Trish shout at him, and had sometimes made Liam go scary or crazy or sit in the toilets shivering to himself. "So they took him away. And they said Trish wasn't properly married to him so I couldn't stay with her." Lance scowled at the unfairness of bureaucracy. "They were sodding married. Trish had a ring and everything."

There was silence for a bit, and then Toad asked the question he'd being dying to ask since the first time he'd talked to Lance behind the shed. "What…what actually does your mutant-thing do? Does it make things explode?"

Lance peeked out at him sideways from under his lashes, "Do you want me to show you?"

Toad bit his lip, uncertain. "Okay."

Lance stood up, brushed himself down and then knelt, touching the dry earth with one hand. "Okay, ready?"

Toad nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

Lance closed his eyes and concentrated. For a short minute nothing happened, and Toad suppressed the urge to giggle. He kept quiet though, right up until the moment where the ground started to tremble.

"Uh…Lance?"

Lance's forehead was screwed in concentration. Toad clutched at the grass around him as the ground rippled, cracking in places. There was a deep rumble from somewhere and then, with a breaking of tension a large crack opened beneath Lance's hand, running down through the ground and splitting the hill in two.

"Wow." Toad breathed as Lance stood up.

"Not bad huh?"

Toad felt slightly jealous. "All I got is a long tongue and green."

"Did they send you to jail for it?"

Toad couldn't think of an answer to that.

By the end of the third week, Lance was back before the courts, this time for stealing. He'd grabbed a jacket in a department store and run out with it, unfortunately right under the CCTV cameras. There was a distinct air of shocked smugness about the adults in the orphanage, a kind of 'well, we did tell you' attitude that Toad almost managed to ignore. He concentrated on making sure that his jeans were always ripped in at least one place, and trying to be more like his hero, who didn't care about anyone or anything or what they thought.

For the other children, Lance Alvers became something of a legend. He'd defied the teachers, defied the world and then defied the law. Come from prison and then sent back there. A three week wonder.

Mortimer Toynebee was twelve when he watched the only other mutant he knew get sent to prison for the second time.

Lance Alvers was only fifteen.

A/N:

This chapter stars a small cameo appearance from Lance Alvers, as he appears in the X-men: Evolution comics. I have never seen X-men: Evolution and will unashamedly admit that my characterisation is based purely off deviantart pictures. Most notably by Dendraica who does awesome pictures. :)

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