The beta – Moviemom44 :)
A small gratis added to the second chapter is a profile of its character created by me once to satisfy the demands of an already non existing thread on creating our own mutants in the X-Men III section of IMDB boards:
Name:Holger Hirsch
Mutant Name:Property
Classification:Epsilon mutant
Affiliation:The Shadow King
Age:15
Sex:Male
Height:172 cm
Weight:62 kg
Hair:Ginger, curly, longish
Eyes:Blue
Skin:Pale with freckles
Powers:He possesses a living shadow
Many young mutants wish they had mutant parents who thanks to this would be able to understand what their children go through. Holger Hirsch though would willingly sacrifice everything only to come from the most ordinary family in the world. His father from whom the boy inherited his X-Gene was a cruel Austrian criminal; his mutant power was the ability to open the portal to an odd dimension which remained untouched by human feet until Holger's family settled in there. The whole dimension consists of a single tropical island with strange exotic plants and animals not seen anywhere in our world. When Holger was 6, his father who was accused of a murder to avoid prison took the whole family to this place. For the next several years the boy lived in there, abused every day, slowly forgetting about the world he left behind him.
For years every day of his life looked the same... until his mutation activated and everything changed. Holger Hirsch is an unfortunate mutant. The X-Gene gave him a shadow which got sentience after the boy's mutation manifested itself. The very first thing the shadow or maybe rather Shadow did after it got sentience and consciousness was committing a brutal rape on its owner followed by setting the island on fire. Holger was the only one who survived.
Shadow is intelligent but its nature is everything but friendly. It is able to change its shape or even leave its owner's body for some time whenever it wants. And when it does, it almost always happens so because Shadow is going to pursue some evil goal. Actually, we could say it's Shadow who has powers because Holger himself shows no sign of any supernatural abilities; it's his shadow which possesses limited pyro- and telekinesis and the ability to go through solid surfaces like walls as well. When separated from its owner, Shadow has a form of a grey humanoid the only visible features of face of whom are big, all black eyes and maliciously smiling, wide mouth. Now, when his father is dead, Holger is trapped in the island dimension but his shadow doesn't find entering the real world any problem, it can do it with ease and every time when Shadow comes back from its escapades to our world, it informs the boy with malicious satisfaction about evil deeds committed by it in there, leaving Holger with pricks of conscience – he feels guilty because it was, after all he who called Shadow into being. Shadow loves malicious pranks made to people to upset them, not only to people it encountered in our world but also to its owner (hmm, who is the owner here and who is the property, we should ask ourselves first). After the first rape, Shadow punished Holger in this way many times to remind him he's only a teenage boy with no power, that he's its property and it can do everything it wants to him. From time to time though Shadow is able to behave in quite a friendly manner. The teen has no power over his evil shadow and can't control it.
Recently a new change took place in Holger's sad life filled with loneliness, boredom and physical and emotional abuse. Not knowing about this, the boy is a distant relative of no one else but The Shadow King himself. The Shadow King being born many centuries ago as a telepathic mutant who after his physical body's death started to live on the astral plane possessing other people's bodies from time to time, as a mortal man had children one of whom in turn became a distant ancestor of the young mutant. The telepathic mutant contacted the boy, making a promise he'd help him get rid of Shadow if the boy joined him. The teen accepted the proposition. For all his life he was treated as someone's property – his abusive father's, his shadow's and now the Shadow King's. If following orders of The Shadow King means in spite of remaining a slave of his evil ancestor he'll be able to run away from his tormentor, Holger will do everything, regardless of what he'll be ordered to do.
"Boo'ya Moon."
A pale head of the moon, full now as it always was here, shone with a cold cadaverous glow also on the sky of Boo'ya Moon. Its reflection in the deep water of the pond was like the face of a vigilant guardian observing with cool amusement the prisoners of this exotic trap. Some of them, although the time was late, were still sitting on the stone benches that surrounded the pond. Others strolled slowly along the white sands of the beach, their expressions constantly vacant, as always, their eyes void of all emotion.
Recently, there were more of those lost souls – whoever they could be - than before and this day was no exception, although before nightfall a few of them managed to go away, presumably back to wherever they arrived from.
Holger Hirsch was trying not to look at them, fixing his eyes instead on the impenetrable blackness of the sky on which night had painted a complicated pattern of strange stars and constellations unknown to ordinary people that burned now above his head.
The uniqueness of this magnificent world, which in daylight seemed to be a paradise-like idyll, but in darkness showed a very different face, had stopped making an impression on him a long time ago. A child, at an astoundingly fast rate, adapts to the condition in which it was raised and even if later that same child were to spend its whole life in a different place, it's that very first place which would still be considered by the child as the most ordinary and natural place for it.
Boo'ya Moon was actually the only world Holger knew. The one from which he arrived nine years ago at the age of six had, from that time, managed to vanish from his memory almost completely, leaving the young mutant with barely a handful of broken, fragmented memories.
It was a place where, as far as he knew, except for his family and the mysterious wanderers from the pond, remained untouched by any other human feet. And even they, his only companions at the moment, didn't count for Holger as 'real' people, resembling as they paced in their contemplative state breathing dead bodies or life-sized, amazingly realistic wax figures. It was a place which…well, WAS. Yes, the very fact of its existence was the only thing you could say about it for sure when you were crazy enough—or insolent enough—to make an attempt to define what Boo'ya Moon really was.
Nobody knew this, not even Holger's deceased father, who many years ago accidentally discovered the entry to it. A long time ago, Stefan Hirsch discovered he could teleport into here when, as a teenage criminal running away from the police after snatching some woman's handbag, all of a sudden he simply found himself in here, straight from the street in Linz. Leaving the confused cops behind, he had recognized a spot of violet which suddenly surrounded him as a wide field of lupine with him standing in the middle of it still clutching the stolen handbag, staring at a copse of trees the likes of which he had never seen before. They appeared similar to palms, but with their trunks covered with a strange moss that looked almost like fluffy fur.
That was how he visited this place for the first time. As his criminal career flourished, Stefan learned that the best way to get rid of witnesses to his crimes was a short trip with them to this magic land. Occasionally, this plan failed, when for some mysterious reason, his captive was like an anchor to the real world, making an expedition to this world impossible for both of them. He was successful with the great majority however in coming to this world—Stefan named it Boo'ya Moon; he just liked the sound of those words—and it was where he finally settled accounts with them, hidden from the unwelcome looks of those who might like to interrupt.
Every victim was buried in an improvised grave marked with a simple wooden homemade cross. It's said that psychopaths like to collect evidences of their crimes and Stefan Hirsch was no exception to this rule. It made him specifically proud that he was the only serial killer who had his own cemetery where the dead bodies of those whom he took here and killed were resting.
Later, after having settled permanently in there with his wife and children, when he would pass by the graveyard with Holger, he liked to tell him about the details of the murders, giggling like he was relating his favorite joke to his son. Accused of a crime from which he couldn't escape this time and threatened with a penalty of many years in prison, Stefan had made Boo'ya Moon a place of exile for his whole family. They all lived in there until last year…until the mutation of his oldest son who had inherited the X-Gene from him manifested.
A silhouette of a ginger haired teen cowering on the beach, tightly embracing himself with his arms to keep warm despite his thin clothing, reflected vaguely in the mirror of the water. Holger was trying to avert his eyes from the pond. Looking into those depths seemed too dangerous; it was enough to look at those who were sitting on the benches, unmoving, staring into space, observing with great concentration something only they were able to see. What was that? What did they see that he couldn't?
That remained as secret as the identity of the mysterious guests to Boo'ya Moon, although the youth, covered with bruises and deep cuts from what Shadow was doing to him, spent a lot of sleepless nights trying to solve this riddle to engage his mind in something. He was desperately seeking a way to return to the real world which he almost didn't remember anymore. The people from the pond were a secret of this place, which was a mystery itself. Was it a strange planet? A different dimension? A product of his father's imagination? Even if it was purely the manifestation of his father's mutation—the boy realized mutations were extremely varied and not always beneficial for their owners; he was a sad example of this himself—the world which might have been brought into being by his father didn't disappear with the cruel man's death. Shadow was no less ruthless and cruel, but unlike his father who finally vanished from Holger's life forever, there was no guarantee the same thing would happen to him too one day. After all, even if Holger wished for it more than anything in the world, how could he ever expect to get rid of his own shadow?
So, Hirsch senior's death—Shadow, just after becoming self-aware, killed him and the rest of Holger's family; the boy didn't miss his psychopathic parent, but he'd do anything to be able to see his mother and two younger sisters once more—didn't result in the automatic destruction of the place he may or may not have created. Similarly, the catatonics from the pond didn't stop appearing either. Holger never met any of them in any other area of Boo'ya. There weren't very many of them, but their number shifted enough that it invariably made the boy ask himself how they got here. Because if the entrance existed…there must be an exit as well. It was impossible to get any sensible answer from them in any manner. Even if they could see Holger and hear his questions, their only reaction was a wild look in their eyes, as if the water from the pond that they found so fascinating was a caustic acid eating away huge gaping holes in their brain tissue. The teenager was afraid he'd stay in there forever. The very prospect of staying on Boo'ya was horrible enough for him…but then there was Shadow, too.
The boy's body shuddered slightly in the chill of the night, but even the cold wasn't enough to keep his eyelids from growing heavier and heavier and finally drifting shut. The aromas of bougainvillea, frangipani and the One Night Queen surrounded him. From somewhere far away, the barely audible but familiar giggling of the laughters was brought to him on the wings of the fragrant night wind as it ruffled his curly, ginger colored hair that was just a bit too long now. Laughters were the living embodiment of the dark side of Boo'ya Moon, the part which manifested itself in all its glory when the silver skull of the moon showed in the sky, dethroning the sun from its daytime rule. Half animal, half human in a ghastly way, they were evil, like everything here in the night time, except maybe the water from the pond. It was these creatures, which he had never had the occasion to see close up, that were the reason he was stuck here, having dawdled for too long on the beach, trying in vain to talk with these breathing wax statues. The best answer he got was some mumbling from some nutso with her wrists cut and dripping blood, talking gibberish about her sister, some Lisey gal, but when he tried to encourage her to tell him something more the woman fell silent, sinking into catatonia again. He would have to wait now until morning before he could return safely home.
Here, close to the pond, it was safe. At least, that was what he wanted to believe, what his instincts told him. It was the same instinct that warned him about Shadow's arrival whenever he came back, returning after a few days of absence, having set out on some escapade of his shady business. Holder's eyelids grew heavier and heavier. For a moment, the young mutant fought sleep, the remnants of the instinct of self-preservation suggesting that if some creature broke into this safe enclave, he wouldn't be able to defend himself while sleeping, but fatigue was stronger than the voice of reason, regardless of how rationally it was resounding in his head. The boy lay down on the cold sand, trying to find the most comfortable position to sleep. He wriggled for some time, yawned aloud, and barely a moment later his blue eyes closed and his breathing became even. He fell asleep.
Something stirred in the darkness. Holger shuddered, regaining consciousness instantly. A slight fit of sudden fear ran across his body. Someone was standing beyond him; the boy could sense it. Was it Shadow who had returned? The teen was lucky to have spent the last four days in blissful solitude, far from his tormentor. It seemed those delightful four days just ended. What was Shadow going to do to him this time? Had he invented any new torture? Slowly, scared and clenching his suddenly shaking hands, Holger turned away. looking to the eyes of the one who was eyeing him up and down with a well-known greedy glare that said, 'you're my property, brat, and it's my right to do with my property whatever I want.' But it wasn't Shadow. The individual who, Holger didn't know for how long, squatted there beyond him while he slept was a strange black skinned teen, a bit younger than the mutant. Small, white teeth, the brightest element on his slim, black face, were bared in a wide smile, like a shark that had just smelled the blood of its next meal.
