|
|
LEAVING BITTERNESS BEHIND written by SelDear
This is essentially GenX #1 with a slight difference - at manifestation, Jono didn’t blow his face off - he just blew a hole in his chest - kinda like in Generation Next in the AoA.
The child two seats in front was staring. She’d been staring for the last two hours of the flight. Just peeping at him over the back of her chair. She was probably about thirteen, dark hair, blue eyes wide with curiosity as she eyed off her fellow passenger with the open curiousity of the young. There was no particular reason that she should be staring, only that the young man was handsome, and alone, and she was bored, and so looking for something to do.
The young man in the seat she was staring at glared at her for the umpteenth time and she turned around quickly. He shifted restlessly, and pulled the letter out of his leather jacket to read again. The paper, once crisp and clean, was a little worn at the edges and limp from protracted travelling in the pocket of his jacket.
His gloved fingers caressed the letterhead: Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. He noted the businesslike type of the words, and the elegant signature at the bottom.
Dear Mr. Starsmore,
After a careful review of your case history as provided by the physician assigned to evaulate your condition, I feel comfortable in encouraging you to consider enrollment at our establishment. We look forward to seeing you when our term begins in September.
Sincerely yours,
Charles Xavier.
The letter was folded up again and secreted back in his pocket.
The only reason I’m doin’ this, he thought, a little angrily, is because Gayle suggested that it’d be wise t’see what I could do about refinin’ whatever it is that I have in me. She was lucky t’have gotten off so lightly when this thing in me manifested.
Gayle knew how to twist him around her little finger. She’d had two years of practise, after all. Once he’d shown her the letter, she’d hassled him about going, bringing it up every time he turned around. By degrees, she’d coaxed him into going, until he’d given in - if only for some peace. At least, that was what his friends had laughed.
They were wrong.
Jonothon Starsmore knew why it was that Gayle Edgerton had hassled him into leaving England and going to America. It wasn’t to do with refining his power - or at least, not as much as he would have liked.
Gayle was afraid of him.
It hurt to know it. She had tried to hide it, tried to be brave after he manifested, after they knew what he was, but he could see the fear lurking in her eyes when she hugged him goodbye - he’d seen it every time they were close lately. And it hurt. So he had left before her fear got too much for him to bear and for her to hide.
And this stranger, this ‘Charles Xavier’ wanted him to come to America to discover the limits of his mutant powers.
Perhaps it was a good thing that he had made the journey.
What lay ahead for him? He didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure that he particularly cared.
He was eighteen, young and handsome; he’d been the lead guitarist in a band with a couple of his friends, and while they weren’t no Beatles, they weren’t bad. He’d had a girlfriend he’d adored and who’d adored him. He’d had the familiarity of where he’d grown up, and the closeness of his friends, even if his family was far distant.
And he had given it all up to cross the Atlantic on the say so of some old guy.
He knew what he was now.
Mutant.
He’d never thought much about mutants before. Sure, he’d heard of them - who hadn’t? People born ‘different’- abilities that stretched beyond the ‘normal’. He’d seen the news about Excalibur - a mutant team in Britain. He’d seen the news about the X-men over in America.
The government and a lot of people just saw them as terrorists.
Jono wasn’t sure how he’d felt about them before anymore. His mate Will had reckoned that the poor sods were just like anyone else - they wanted to be left alone to live their lives in peace.
Whether it was just the ‘mutant’, or specifically ‘Jono as mutant’ that Gayle shied from, he didn’t know. He didn’t want to know either.
They’d been going out for two years - since he dropped out of high school to pursue his career with his friends in the band. Leggy and curvaceous, Gayle fitted nicely into his side when they walked into a pub, his arm around her shoulders, her arm around his waist. Wavy auburn hair, cornflower blue eyes that could gleam at him with anything from purest innocence to sheer devilry, and enough charm to have had any man she took a fancy to.
Somehow, she had taken a fancy to him.
Jono had never been charming. He’d never had that ease of conversation, or garrulousness that other boys used to pick up the girls. Not that he’d been awkward, either, just that he hadn’t been able to rabbit on as Tony could, or pick a topic of conversation as could Will and run with that. He was who he was, and he made no apologies.
Mind you, the other guys in the band had laughed at him, because he protested that he didn’t have charm. "What then," demanded Tony laughingly, "D’you call it when every girl in the crowd is wishin’ that yer girlfriend would drop dead so’s she could ‘ave a chance at charmin’ yer ‘eart?"
"Wishful thinking!" Gayle had retorted back, sprawled comfortably in Jono’s lap. She’d looked gleefully up at him with her loving blue eyes and drawn him down for a possessive kiss.
The intercom buzzed, interrupting his thoughts, and a stewardess’ clear saccharine tones announced that flight 406 from London was approaching Boston, and that passengers should being preparation for landing.
As the disembodied voice droned away the list of things that should be done for landing, Jono rubbed one hand across his jaw and stared fixedly at the back of the seat in front of him. Lately, he woke up from nightmares - woke in a drench of sweat as he dreamed of his power manifesting in more than a mere energy field erupting from his chest in the middle of a concert, but an explosion that he kept within himself until the power ripped at the very fibres of his being, and tore him open from his mouth to his belly, sucking him hollow, ruining his face.
As it was, he had a hole in his chest large enough for someone to put their fist in and not touch the sides. He no longer had any need to either eat or breathe. Those two functions were gone with the energy that was generated in him. He didn’t even bleed, for crying out loud! A few days after he manifested, he’d cut his finger on a broken beer bottle and grimaced with the pain - despite the lack of nerves…but there was no blood. The cut had gaped eerily up at him, and Jono had put a bandage around it rather than have to look at it too much. After a day or two, the wound closed up as if the blood flow had healed the skin. Whatever it was that flamed and fired under his skin worked as well as blood and nerves and flesh to keep his hide in one piece, keep his brain working, keep feeling in his flesh.
It was something he was still getting used to. Somehow his body kept working, although he had no blood, he ate nothing, and he breathed nothing.
His only speech was telepathic now - it meant that he had to work a bit harder to make himself understood. People had to think that they were ‘hearing’ his voice, and not just understanding what it was he was saying.
Amidst all this, somehow his mind kept functioning - force of habit perhaps?
The thought had brought some gruesome possibilities - he was much like the living dead, now. He was no longer Jono Starsmore, he was only the energy within him. It was a frightening thought. Will I ever die? he had wondered more than once since he manifested, and he’d been unable to answer himself.
Maybe he would find some of the answers at this ‘School for Gifted Youngsters’ he was going to. For a few moments, he pondered over his destination. What kind of people would he meet there? What would they think of him? What kinds of things would they expect from him?
He turned his attention back to the girl, who was staring at him again, and scowled at her hard enough to make her turn around again. Then he looked out the window at the city below, he would find out what his fellow students were like soon enough.
Baggage check and customs were passed without a hitch.
As they scanned his passport and compared it to his face, he wondered what it would have been like going through customs if the bio-blast that took out his chest had ripped off his face as well as he dreamed that it might have.
He had nothing more than a knapsack on his back - the rest of his stuff he had left with Will and Gayle - a kind of statement to say that he would be back, that this transfer to America was only temporary. Whether or not he could bring himself to go back to Gayle’s hedging, Tony’s careful avoidance, and Will’s overdone good cheer was questionable, though.
Brief anger rushed through him, then as that left, despair set in.
What was he doing here?
Where was he going?
Why him?
He passed through the gate out into the main airport, looking with his eyes for someone who might be looking for a tall lean Brit in black leather.
People passed this way and that around him as he slowly walked forwards - unaware of the furnace of energy that raged beneath the covering of his skin, burning his future in biokinetic flame, hollowing him out until he was nothing but the husk of what had once been Jonothon Starsmore.
There.
A man - redheaded, tall, muscular. Square jaw, dark glasses. He was peering this way and that, and on glimpsing Jonothon, smiled. Behind him, two kids - young teens from the look of them - glanced at each other and made some comment. The man answered back, turning away for a moment.
Making his way through the crowds, Jono made eye contact with the man, who grinned and turned to the kids behind him.
And it was at that moment, that the creature struck.
It came out of nowhere - black and spiky and hideously ugly. He saw a clawlike appendage reach for him, and tried to manuevre…
The palm of its claw settled firmly on his chest, but the long sharp black claws of its fingers bit into Jono’s mouth and jaw. If he had possessed a voice anymore, he would not have been able to use it. As it was, the shock silenced him for a moment.
The creature spoke, it’s voice a deathly rattle that vibrated deep in the bone…if Jono had still had bones to vibrate: Welcome to America, Jonothon Starsmore…now DIE!
Something began happening - something that Jono could feel in the creature’s body, but couldn’t identify. It began as a slow ache, grew to a steadily insistant pain…
Let me amend that, the monster added, with a sense of whimsy that was off-kilter with its actions, First, Provide me with the genetic stuff of life I need to suck from your bones…THEN die!
Sudden furious pain blossomed in his face and chest as the creature tightened its grip on him - the long spikes of fingers were slicing into his throat and mouth…and…
…and there were mouths in its hands…mouths with sharp teeth that were chewing into him…sucking the energy from him…the lifeforce that was the only thing he had keeping him alive…the only thing left that was worth living for and even that was not worth it…not without his friends…not without Gayle by his side…
His thoughts and his despair ate away at him as surely as the monster feeding off his energies. The creature would suck his power from him and Jonothon Starsmore would die.
As if he wasn’t already dead. He’d lost everything that he knew, everything that mattered to him. He had lost Tony to prejudice, Will to discomfort and unease, and Gayle…oh Gayle…he had lost Gayle to her own fears… The casualties of his mutation had been more than just his body - the greatest casualty had been his life…
The old Jonothon Starsmore was dead. The thought froze him, paralysed him, drained him dry: a creature worse than the one that sucked his physical energy from him.
Distantly, as if from far away, he could hear words around him - the shrieks and cries of the humans who saw the monster. Suddenly there was a piercing wail that rose up - a wall of sound so strong that it propelled the monster and its prey along before it. The monster received most of the blast, but Jono felt the force behind the blast. Behind that wail, Jono heard a voice - the voice of a a lilting Irish brogue with a thread of steel that showed this man’s determination…and his dream? "I don’t know who or what you are, creature - but I’m telling ye once: Release the lad!"
Before I’ve finished my meal? sneered the creature, it’s voice. Not likely, Mister Cassidy. Not even a possibility.
"How do ye know who I am?" demanded Cassidy, suddenly bewildered.
It’s just one aspect of my power, Sean, replied the monster. May I call you Sean? It’s voice held powerful mockery, Knowledge at a glance. I see your power - your passion - your past - and your present!
Another voice cut in, higher, shriller - a girl’s voice - but not shrieking in fear: sarcastic. "Nice alliteration, Uglier-than-thou!" There was a lot of attitude in that voice, "Can ya ‘see’ we’re gonna kick yer butt?"
The creature laughed, still draining energy from Jono - less now that its attention was diverted, but still at an alarming rate. Not in this lifetime child. You see, I also possess the ability to rechannel energy I have siphoned. In this case Jonothon’s…combined with Sean’s!
There was another wail - different, more resonant…suddenly the creature’s words impacted in Jono’s consciousness: I also possess the ability to rechannel energy I have siphoned… The mix of Sean Cassidy’s mutant gifts - for the man could surely be nothing else but a mutant - and Jono’s own biokinetic powers was flung back at the trio who were all that stood between Jono and death.
Another voice joined in - lower, deeper - a boy’s voice; angry, challenging. He said something that Jono wasn’t listening to. He was rethinking his life.
His parents…long gone.
Tony and Will and Peter…gone.
Gayle…oh Gayle…she was gone too.
Jonothon Starsmore was dead.
Jonothon Starsmore didn’t want to die. Not now - he wasn’t yet twenty! Not like this - not sucked hollow by a creature that fed off mutant energies. Not this way - dead in the heart long before his body became the battery for this monster.
But what alternatives did he have?
A new life. New possibilities.
New friends?
The two kids who had accompanied Sean to the airport - the young black boy and the Asian girl - mutants like himself?
Maybe.
He didn’t know for sure, but even the possibility was better than nothing at all.
He heard the girl shout: "Yer sick and a half, creep! Ya want something to chew on, try…"
"No!" Sean interrupted the girl, "Ye’ll only be givin’the monster power t’throw back at us!"
What a quick study, Sean, laughed the monster, I’m impressed!
The old Jonothon Starsmore was dead. He’d had life easy enough.
But the man he was now, the man he would become with this mutation, he would fight for life. For the right to live in a world which would probably run screaming from him as much as from this monster that fed off him. I see you power…your passion…your past…and your present…
But the monster would never see his future. The monster intended that Jono would never have a future.
Jono intended that he would.
The three out there who had come to greet Jono were powerless to stop this monster - anything that they threw at him could only be thrown back at them… But Jono had proximity, and surprise on his side…
<You sincerely want to be impressed?> Jono demanded, trying to speak psionically past the clawed hand with its hungry mouth. <Try this, pillock!>
He pushed himself beyond the pain, beyond the thing eating him, and exerted the well of energy within him to blast the creature before him to kingdom come. He strained with all his might and main and felt the barriers that he had set up around himself crumble under the onslaught of his power. It poured from him in a torrent, the energy that his body generated pushing the monster back away from him.
WHA…?! No one has ever used their power while I was siphoning them!~It’s impossible! The creature roared as Jono focused his energy on it, pushing him back with the energy generated from his hollow body and his concentrated mind. His manuoevre had taken so much effort, but he still stood upright, even if his shoulders slumped.
<Nothing is impossible.> His words were painful to utter, he didn’t have the psionic power to give them distinction - they slurred together - drained, but not beaten. Never beaten.
Ahhh… sighed the monster mockingly, Youth. You and your boundless optimism…
Jono felt a stir of anger within that lent him a second wind. He stood tall, planting his feet apart, and letting the bandages around his chest drop to the ground. <I’m speaking from experience,> he told the monster: <If I can adjust to this…> and he indicated the furnace blazing out of his body, <I can cope with anything!>
And he meant it.
It was a feeling like breaking out from a prison - the death of his old life, and the start of something new. Jonothon Starsmore was alive and intended to stay that way. He had lost everything he had - it was a good time and a good way to make a new life.
The creature threw back his head and laughed. The odds were four to one, and it didn’t care. It made some comment about a ‘veritable smorgasbord of designer genes’ and was just asking them to line up, when there was a sudden blaze of light, and something landed on him with a:
WHAM.
I actually felt that… the creature said, surprised, looking up at the girl that hovered over it.
Dark-skinned, black haired, almost scorning to soil herself by touching this creature, the girl sneered: "It was pain, ‘Emplate. Get used to it."
Emplate?
The creature looked up at her: You have me at a disadvantage, young lady…you know my name, yet I…I am, for some reason, unable to discern yours…
Behind the light, four others had appeared. A blonde woman all in white - adult, breathtaking in an icy kind of way. A young man with dark hair, Hispanic features and grey skin - grey skin? An old man in a loincloth, black-skinned, grey-haired, short, stout. And a girl who was even now saying something to the dark-haired girl about knowing that the others were in trouble.
If he’d had any breath to be taken, he would have said she took his breath away. A mobile, expressive face, framed with hair the colour of golden sunshine, and set with sapphire blue eyes that were just as expressive as the features that surrounded them. The expression in them was determination right now, echoed in the firm fine line of the jaw and the set of the mouth.
"We’ll just have to resolve one mystery at a time!" her voice was a lilting drawl - Vivien Leigh’s soft Southern drawl in Gone with the Wind. Her actions were anything but gentle - she made directly for the creature at a dead run.
Someone cried out something - a protest, a denial, a warning - her name! - but the sunshine girl didn’t hear, she was so intent on her attack. "PAIGE!" howled Sean Cassidy as the creature - Emplate - turned, almost casually, and gutted her with one swipe of the wickedly long claws.
Her cry of pain would haunt Jono in nights to come, he knew. Blood spewed from the wound, a pooling scarlet stain and someone was calling for an ambulance…a hospital…
Suddenly the Asian girl snapped orders to the contrary. Running to her downed team-mate, she began pulling at the girl’s skin, making gagging noises as the flesh began to shred. Jono almost started across the room to pull the Asian girl away, until he glimpsed what was underneath…
Underneath, the girl was perfect - untouched… Weak and trembling, but otherwise whole.
Jono almost stared at the evidence of the girl’s mutation - but his attention was taken as the creature had moved again - backwards. It was backing off.
"So what’s the gig, Snuffleupagus?" demanded Asian, "You were totally buff when you tried to ambush Sparky here…" It was a moment before Jono realised that she was referring to him. "But why do I doubt yer ready to mix it up with the rest of us combined?"
The dark-skinned beauty snapped, "Don’t taunt him, Jubilee, if he wanted to he…"
Shh, child, Emplate said suddenly, a grin in its voice: You’ll ruin the ending.
Sean noted, out loud, that the creature was unlikely to wait for the ending, and it agreed.
But Jono noted that it couldn’t resist turning around for one last taunt: I will return…Wherever you run, I can follow…Bon Appetit, children… It began fading from sight - vanishing into whatever dimension it had come from.
The dark-skinned girl rushed forwards, black hair flying behind her like a cloud: "Wait, we can stop him from disappear…" Suddenly she stopped: "Wha…?!? C-can’t move…" She raised her hands to her head as Emplate fully vanished: "What just happened?"
The blonde woman answered quickly and briefly: "I did. I happened."
From the interchange that followed - a furious spate of words from the dark-skinned beauty, and a cool reply from the woman - Jono gathered that the woman was a telepath. And if her clothing was any indication - white from head to toe - she was the famous Emma Frost of Frost Enterprises who had paid for his ticket over here.
It was the grey skinned boy who noted first that people had appeared again, and were moving around them - as if they didn’t exist. "Why does it seem like we’re invisible to everyone around us?"
"Because we are, Angelo," said Emma Frost with a self-satisfied smile. "I’m using my power to make us psi-blind to the herd." Behind her, Sean Cassidy rubbed his right temple and the words were clear in his gestures: What the heck am I in?
Jono could understand that - he was feeling the same way. The eyes of his fellow students - his fellow mutants - were coming to light on him - studying him carefully. He turned away, resetting the bandages around his chest and zipping up his jacket to hide the hole, suddenly trying to cope with everything that had happened in the last half-hour as well as the scrutiny of these others.
They were like him. Mutants.
He had to remember that. It would define him for the rest of his life - the genetic difference in him that meant that Jono Starsmore was no longer human - perhaps he had never been. But he would never be perceived as human again, either. Not with the gaping hole in his chest. Not with the fire that burned within him and kept him whole - if not sane.
Behind him, there was a step, and the voice with attitude told him that it was the Asian girl - Jubilee - speaking: "So Sparky…" she said jauntily.
<Jonothon,> he said then, turning to look down at her challengingly. <My name…is Jonothon..>
She shrugged, "So, Jonothon," one slender arm waved to encompass the other three students watching them, further away, the dark girl was ‘having words’ with Emma Frost, and beside them Sean Cassidy attempting to intervene: "Welcome to Generation X."
In the next few minutes, Jono met his fellow mutants. The black-skinned boy was Everett Thomas, the grey-skinned young man Angelo Espinosa. Jubilation Lee was the attitude girl, and the black-haired, olive-skinned girl snapping at Emma Frost was Monet St Croix: ‘Perfect Miss M’, Jubilee said with a slight snip in her voice that told Jono that all was not well between those two. And the sunshine blonde… "Paige Guthrie," she said in her soft drawly voice, a faint smile on her face as she looked up at him.
Gayle had been one of the most beautiful girls Jono had ever laid eyes on.
Paige Guthrie left Gayle eating dust. She was gorgeous.
"Our country mouse," teased Angelo behind, with a faint, almost unnoticeable emphasis on the possessive pronoun. Except that Jono noticed it.
"Better being a ‘country mouse’ than a ‘city rat’!" Paige retorted back with fire, and Jubilee rolled her eyes and turned towards Emma: "How’re we gonna fit us all into the car to get home…"
"We’re not," Emma said, walking up to them. "Sean, Monet and Everett can fly home - Synch can practise flying. That leaves five of us in the car." She smiled. "A perfect fit." She glanced over at the knapsack that Jono had dropped in his struggle with Emplate. "That’s all you brought?"
<I’ll be sending back for more,> he said simply.
"You’ll be needing more," she said, "Let’s move out."
Jono went back to pick up the knapsack, and slung it over his shoulder thoughtfully.
He hadn’t thought he’d be here long - it looked like he’d be here much longer than he initially supposed. Much, much longer.
The boy who had been Jono was dead. He’d had an easy life.
It was time to discover who was the man he would become.
As he followed the others to the car, his thoughts were spinning: I’m going to be here a while, he decided, seeing Paige Guthrie lift her chin in a sally back at Angelo.
A long while, I think.
