I'm back! It's time for chapter 1 and I'm hoping to get it off the ground. I am introducing a bunch of new characters including Fiona's brother Lucas. I haven't got any critiques yet so I'm going to assume that my writing style is *cough* perfect. Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Chapter 1
Lucas dodged a mechanical tentacle that shot out of the wall. The thing snaked around for another go at him missing his face by a few inches. He sidestepped and clapped his hands together hard causing a shockwave that shattered the clawed head. Instead of retracting like he expected, though, the decapitated tentacle wrapped around his right leg dragging him upside down into the air. He tried to clap again but another tentacle wrapped around his left arm pulling it away from his right. Hearing laughter he looked down to see Kitty laughing at his predicament.
"So," she mocked, "you were going to "completely own" the danger room this time around?"
"No fair," he protested, "it cheated."
"You gotta be ready for anything in real life kid." A gruff voice said over the speakers.
Lucas turned his head to glare at Logan, "that was still a dirty trick."
Logan just laughed, "Kid all I did was up the difficulty one level, if you can't take the level 5 tentacle attack simulation we got thing to work on."
"The fact that that was the first one has got to be embarrassing," Kitty laughed while dodging a tentacles and one of Cyclops' eye beam simultaneously.
"It wouldn't hurt you to be a little more on your toes as well," Logan chided sending a quartet of tentacles at Kitty.
Kitty just rolled her eyes and phased through all four. The tentacles then split up at attack all at once; she just phased through the first three but was hit by the fourth.
"What the-," she stuttered off.
Logan chuckled and explained, "A few of the tentacles can vibrate at your phasing frequency. That mean that they can grab you solid or not."
Kitty had found out about this firsthand as the tentacle wrapped her up like a Boa Constrictor choking its prey. Satisfied Logan turned to look at Lucas and was greeted by the wreckage of two tentacles.
"Smooth move kid but running to Scott won't help you now."
"He's not", Scott, or Cyclops if you prefer, said grinning.
Logan scanned the room and found Lucas stand in the middle of the room on top of the giant disc that was currently deploying about half the tentacles in the room.
"You got guts kid but you just lost yourself a round of the Danger Room." Logan gloated.
Logan redirected all the tentacles from the disc from what they were currently doing to attack the uppity young mutant who stood boldly on top of their casing.
"Nice knowin ya kid," Logan boasted triumphantly, "but I now got you, Kitty, Kurt, Peter, Jubilee, Matt, and soon I'll have Scott tangled up." He gestured to the other X-men that were currently trussed up by the tentacles in one way or another.
Lucas simply smiled and watched as 78 tentacles dove towards him from all angles. Seconds before they reached him he jumped up lifting both of his, now bare, feet and slamming them as hard as he could onto the casing of the deployment disc. The resulting shockwave shattered the supports of the disc knocking it back into its standby storage area beneath the danger room floor. All of the tentacles that were attacking dropped dead as they were literally cut off from their power source. Logan's jaw dropped and everyone else cheered as they saw that Lucas' move had brought the trainees the required number of tentacles to win, 150. Logan quickly gained his composure and snorted.
"Lucky shot kid, but I'll give it to ya anyway," he conceded as he released the others and walked out of the control room.
"Guess you did 'own' the danger room today," Scott congratulated while giving Kitty a goading look.
"Yeah, congrats," Kitty mumbled while she walked out.
After many more congratulations Lucas went to the showers to get cleaned up for school. He was not looking forward to going to Bayville High; it was the only truly awful part of staying here at Xavier's School. Sure it was a lot better than the way people at home treated him after he violently discovered he was a mutant. Lucas shuttered as he relived that painful experience.
It was really just a normal day, okay that was a lie, it was one of was one of a series of improving days. After his mom had remarried thing had started to look up: money was no longer tight as Bill (boring name I know) was the manager of the local supermarket chain, he could go to a school where thy chance of him getting shot by drug-runners was below 50%, and best of all with their last name changed none of Dad's old "friends" showed up on their doorstep randomly. He was in the lunch line when it happened; some idiot flung a sloppy joe at Fred Demitri. The big thug turned around and assumed that the only person in sight without a joe was the culprit (which was surprisingly good skills of deduction on his part). He grabbed Lucas, who was 90 pounds and sic inches his junior, and shoved him into the wall.
"You think your funny you little punk," he berated, spewing spittle all over Lucas' face.
"I didn't do it honest" Lucas pleaded. And for a moment it looked like Fred was going to let go when another idiot shouted: "Lucas is about to get it for throwing food at Demitri.
Fred's face turned red and he slammed Lucas into the wall harder.
"So it was you ya little #*!^." he screamed.
Lucas looked desperately around for help but by some cruel irony the monitors were busy breaking up a catfight in the hall and the lunch lady was getting another tray of joes from the kitchen and fat chance on anyone taking on Fred for his sake. Fred than lifted his up and threw him to the ground.
"Get up and fight you #*!^," the brute shouted.
Lucas managed to stand only to be greeted by a punch to the face. Thing was followed by a painful stomp on his right foot and a swift punch into his gut. Lucas fell but was dragged up for another viscous punch to the face. By know a crowd had formed around the beating but there was still no help in sight.
"You think your funny now little punk," Fred bellowed. Lucas would have answered except that his left cheek was so swelled up that it came out as a series of croaks.
"Maybe a little more will teach you to mind your own business," the red-faced jerk spat.
He punched Lucas again in the stomach but in the process lost his grip on his victim. Lucas stumbled back but couldn't escape through the crowd. He turned and saw Fred barreling towards him fist ready. Not knowing what else to do Lucas threw a blind punch and miraculously connected with Fred's face. What happened next, no one could have predicted. Upon impact with Fred a shockwave erupted from Lucas' fist throwing Lucas back several feet. Fred's face seemed to fold in on itself and Lucas could hear the bones crushing. Fred plowed through the cloud only stopping after he fell into Chi Long, the Chinese sumo exchange student. Lucas could only stare dumbly at the crumpled body of his tormenter. The monitors showed up and called 911 and sent the gaping students. The school police officer detained him until the MRD agents came to get him. His mother showed up before them and when the principle explained what happened she became visibly paler. She tried to talk to him but they were both in shock so both said little. That was the last time he saw her.
The MRD agents showed up and put him in the back of an armored van, before they could close the door though a military Osprey dropped of a one-eyed man who walked up to the head agents and started a heated argument with the agent. After about five minutes the agent slumped his shoulders in defeat and turned to let Lucas out of the van. The one-eyed man motioned for him to get in the Osprey. Once on board he and the man rode in silence for about an hour. When the Osprey landed and opened its doors Lucas saw a very nice mansion surrounded my some well cared for and extensive grounds. Waiting for them were two men; one was in a wheel chair and the other stood arms crossed with a scowl on his face. After talking to them for a few minutes the one-eyed man walked back to Lucas.
"You're in good hands," was all he said before boarding the Osprey and flying off.
"Lucas," the bald man said, "my name is Charles Xavier and I would like to welcome you to your new home.
Lucas shook the memories from his head, that had been nearly two years ago. Much had changed since then and as far as he was concerned he was better for it. He missed his mother who died of a heart attack last year but by this point he was used to loss. First his father had died nearly five years ago, and then his sister Fiona had disappeared about three years ago and was probably dead as well. So he was really without a biological family anymore, but his friends here at Xavier's had really helped. He rushed outside to hop in Jean's van for the ride to school. Looking out the window he wondered what had really happened to Fiona, they had found her RV on the side of the road with most of her belongings but no sign of Fiona. He snorted at the barley remembered memories of his dad "homeschooling" Fiona, those two were really paranoid. Maybe they had something to be paranoid about. Lucas shook his head; he had been spending too much time around Logan, and enjoyed the rest of the trip to school.
Okay, this whole chapter was about introducing Lucas. I did not mean for that to happen but it was kind of necessary as he is the only character that needed to be completely made up. The next chapter will hopefully start to make sense of all this but we'll have to see. Chapter 2 will probably be delayed a little as I finally got my other story Blood of Reach finished. It still has some snags I'd like to get rid of so it will take up my time in the foreseeable future. Unlike this story though Reach is completely planned out it just needs to be finished so chapter 2 will be done before Thanksgiving, Lord willing.