The fairgrounds were unsettling, dark and empty but lacking threat. Erik and Jason strolled the beaten paths.
"How do you manage the awful stench of wet straw and burnt oil on a daily basis?" Erik spat, interrupting the current conversation.
Jason laughed. "The way you get used to any awful thing: repeated exposure."
"Mutants should not be living in such conditions," Erik bemoaned, mostly to himself.
Jason let the topic die in silence.
Some yards later, Erik spoke again. "Are there any other mutants working in this circus?"
"Absolutely," Jason confirmed. "I imagine most circuses are mostly mutants."
"How many of them would be of use to me?"
"Far fewer. I can introduce you to some prospects, though."
"Please," Erik said simply, gesturing for Jason to step forward and lead him to those prospects.
They soon found themselves outside a round tent. Visible through the entrance was a boxing ring. The lights were still on, but no spectators appeared to be straggling. Inside, Erik was greeted with two different but equally strange sights: a man who uncannily resembled Jason and a hulking behemoth of flesh.
Jason gestured theatrically as his doppelganger and the embodiment of corpulence ceased their sparring. "Erik, I present to you, Unus the Untouchable and the Blob!"
"Who's this chump?" the Blob asked, his irreverence highlighted by his deep Southern drawl.
"He certainly has interesting taste in headwear," Unus the Untouchable sneered in a thick Italian accent.
Erik ignored their jibes and addressed Jason. "These are the prospects you mentioned?"
"What they lack in manners, they make up for in ability," Jason assured Erik. He pivoted to the two in the ring, paused, then pivoted back to Erik. "You seem the kind of man that introduces himself."
Erik smirked. "Indeed." He cleared his throat then explained, "My name is Erik. I am a mutant recruiting my brethren to combat the oppression we face at the hands of humanity."
Unus the Untouchable and the Blob guffawed. "And I'm the Tooth Fairy!" the Blob retorted.
As the two laughed uncontrollably, Erik told Jason, "I've wasted enough time on these clowns."
That snapped the two out of it. "Who you callin' a clown, there, Earl?" the Blob demanded.
"Imagine a mutant insulting a fellow mutant in such a way! Unthinkable!" Unus the Untouchable added.
"My name is Erik—"
"Guys, guys," Jason intervened. "How many times have we talked about getting out of here? Of sticking it to the sick fucks that make it so the circus is the only job we can have?"
The two looked at each other.
"Please," Jason continued, "you two are the only people here I tolerate. Just hear Erik out and keep your mouths shut, okay?"
They nodded.
"I don't know, Jason," Erik mused. "I was aware of your powers; I had reason to convince you. I find this situation to be inverted. What do they have to offer?"
"'Unus the Untouchable' is not just a name!" Unus the Untouchable declared in indignation. "It is my existence! Show him, Blob!"
The Blob proceeded to bolo punch Unus the Untouchable with no reservation. The Blob's flesh cascaded down his arm, swallowed his fist, and recoiled all the way back up to his neck before settling. Meanwhile, Unus the Untouchable flew across the ring, cleared the back ropes, and crashed into a cluster of metal folding chairs. He remained motionless.
"You didn't have to kill him, Fred," Jason chastised the Blob, unable to suppress a cheeky smile.
Suddenly, the launched man popped up. "Behold! I am untouched!"
After Unus the Untouchable climbed back into and across the ring, Erik could see that the man was indeed unscathed. His clothes were not even ruffled. "Remarkable," Erik commented to himself.
The Blob dusted his shoulders off then asked, "Seriously, though. What's in it for us? Other than, you know, the whole 'no oppression' thing?"
Erik sighed and looked to Jason for confirmation, who provided it with raised eyebrows and a shrug. "Yes," Erik relented, "I can pay you, much more than you make now."
"Why did you not start with this information?" Unus the Untouchable exclaimed as he vaulted over the front ropes.
Erik shook his head as the Blob crawled out from under the front ropes, then he directed an observation towards Unus the Untouchable. "By the way, your stage name is a mouthful."
"Angelo," Unus the Untouchable answered while offering a handshake. Erik accepted with gingerly disgust.
"Fred Dukes," the Blob announced before snatching Erik's hand and shaking Erik's entire arm.
Once released, Erik readjusted his glove and remarked under his breath, "What a fitting name."
Angelo and Fred exited at Erik's gesture, but Erik held back Jason. "If I live to regret this," he seethed to Jason, "so will you."
Jason offered another shrug and a shit-eating grin of feigned innocence. Erik released him and exited the tent, leaving Jason to catch his breath.
The duo meandered through the front garden of an opulent, brick mansion. Scott couldn't take in the grandeur visibly, but he listened in awe to the gentle ripple of water cycling through stone fountains.
Scott started and stopped a few sentences. "How did... how do..." He took a breath and admitted, "I'm trying to think of a polite way to ask about your wealth."
Charles smiled. "It's a strange notion, isn't it? That it's impolite to ask about a person's wealth? I suppose it's a folkway that the well-to-do developed to stop the so-called commoners from approaching them."
Scott was silent.
"I apologize; that's not what you asked me. The short answer is inheritance. My grandfather was a highly valued scientist employed by the government to research various topics, none of which he was ever able to disclose. I, myself, have earned several grants to fund my genetics research, but I am not oblivious to my advantages."
The sudden sound of hydraulics halted Scott halfway up the stairs to the entrance.
"It's safe, Scott. You're hearing the wheelchair lift," Charles assured him.
"Oh," Scott accepted. "Probably should've inferred that. Sorry."
"You've done no harm," Charles began as the lift reached its apex and the gate disengaged. "Replace empty apologies with gratitude, my boy."
Scott nodded. He took issue with the choice of the word "empty", but he knew what Charles meant. The first of several lessons, I suppose, he noted to himself.
Upon hearing the doors swing open, he followed Charles inside before a concern bubbled up. "Is there a lot of stuff in here that I could break? Like, should I be extra careful with this?" he asked, shaking his cane at the end of the question.
"I'm much less concerned with what you could break and much more concerned with what could break you. They make vases every day, but there's only one you, Scott."
Charles continued through the foyer and down the front hallway with Scott in tow. "We need to get you cleaned up," Charles explained. "I'm worried your body will heal over those shards instead of pushing them out. You can wait in the room to your left; I'm going to get the first aid kit."
Scott stood and listened to the wheels of Charles's chair roll away from him. He smelled the dusty air of a wooden interior that was scarcely lived in. He felt the weight of motionless air that had been kept at the same temperature for too long. He wanted to remember this moment before he broke down. He wanted to remember what the precipice of change was like before he took the plunge.
With a sharp inhale, Scott pivoted and made his way into the side room. He found a bed, sat on the edge, and caved in. Everything he'd been holding onto since he made the decision to escape the orphanage earlier that day came tumbling down inside him. He was an abandoned building scheduled for demolition, and someone finally lit the explosives.
Charles returned and paused in the doorway. He wanted to reach into the poor boy's mind and make it all better — to feel his pain for him, to erase today from his history — but he knew he couldn't. He knew that that grief was Scott's and Scott's alone, to bear and to process. He knew it would make him stronger in the end.
Charles approached the bed and said nothing. Scott continued to cry as Charles unpacked the first aid kit and began to clean Scott's wounds.
"How does yours always go so much higher than mine?" Annie demanded between laughs.
"I don't know!" Jean admitted, also giggling.
The two girls were in the front yard of a modest Cape Cod, one of several built en masse to artificially form a neighborhood out of suburban wilderness. Jean's Sky Dancer finally came back down. She caught it and turned to see her friend feigning indignation with crossed arms and an exaggerated stomp. Before Jean could say anything, Annie broke, and the two started laughing all over again.
"Do you want to swap launchers?" Jean eventually offered. "Maybe mine's just stronger or something."
"Okay, let's see," Annie agreed, relinquishing her launcher and taking Jean's. "You know I'm not mad at you, though, right, Jeanie?"
"Oh, I know, Annie!" Jean assured her. She took a moment to line up the ridges on the bottom of the dancer with the ridges in the launcher. They never wanted to align on the first try. "I know," Jean repeated. "I'm curious, too."
Annie fussed with the ruffles on her dancer's dress. "I wanna be a Sky Dancer one day. A badass superhero in a dress."
"Annie!" Jean admonished, stifling a chortle. "You can't say that word! What if my parents hear you?"
"Sorry! I forget sometimes that we're not grown-ups yet." She fussed with the dress some more then continued, "Ya know what I mean, though? Fly up there in the sky, protecting the school and looking pretty while doing it?"
Jean looked down at her dancer and brushed its hair out of its face. "Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean."
"Hey, brats!" a teasing voice called from the porch. Jean and Annie turned to see Sarah, Jean's older sister, hanging through the front door, anchored by one hand on the inner doorframe. A toothy grin filled the bottom half of Sarah's face.
"I told you not to call us that!" Jean whined then stuck her tongue out.
Sarah returned the gesture then explained, "Mom's making sandwiches for lunch. She wants you guys to wash up before we eat."
"One more flight?" Jean pled.
Sarah swung inside, checked the kitchen, and swung back out. "She hasn't even gotten the bread out. One more flight then come in, okay?"
"Okay!" Jean and Annie answered in unison.
Annie's gaze caught Jean's as Jean turned back around. "Alright," Annie said, "time to see if it's your launcher or if you're just lucky. Ready? Three, two, one, pull!"
The two Sky Dancers wound into the sky, weaving in and out of each other's ascent.
"They're looking pretty even!" Jean observed, squinting out the sun.
"That's so weird!" Annie cried as the dancers reached their apexes. "Yours has been going higher all day, but we swap launchers, and they're only even?"
"I don't know..." Jean trailed off, noticing Annie's dancer was drifting over the street. "Annie, your dancer!"
Annie was unfazed. "I see it."
Jean caught her dancer as Annie walked to the curb. "Wait, Annie, don't!"
"It's okay, Jean! I'll look both ways; I know what I'm doing!"
There was no traffic whatsoever. The only cars Annie could see were parked along the curb on either side of the road. She looked to where her dancer had landed and looked both ways again, just to make sure. Still nothing.
Jean's mom leaned out the door. "Jean, sweetie! What do you girls want to drink?"
Jean turned to look at her mom as she answered, but she was cut off by the sound of rubber screeching on pavement.
"ANNIE!" Jean called out, but there was no response. Out of the corner of her eye, Jean could see her mom running to the road. Then, Jean collapsed, too.
It had been two months since Scott had moved in with Charles. The two had kept their ears to the ground reading the papers, watching the news, and combing the internet but still hadn't found any new mutants. Charles was still deliberating on how to handle Scott's adoption and its intricacies, but the facility hadn't found Scott yet.
The dynamic duo spun in their seats in the office, treading in the daily weight of fruitless investigation. Suddenly, the landline rang and cut through the doldrums. Scott held his breath as Charles answered.
"This is Charles," Charles confirmed. "Moira?! I haven't heard from you in ages! How have you been?"
The normally grandiloquent Charles had become a lovesick puppy. Scott smiled to himself then escaped to the hallway.