"Fuck," I muttered to myself, sitting in the park and looking at the news feed on my phone. All of the news stations that covered San Francisco had me blowing a cable car off of the tracks as the top story, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!"
They had my name and my picture. Awesome. At least they had the good grace not to give everyone my parents' address.
I turned my phone completely off. I didn't want to look at it anymore.
I still felt stir-crazy, but I didn't know what else to do. I'd walked around the park time and time again. It had been hours and it was getting dark, but I still wasn't tired. At this point I was trying to see just what made me shoot that blast from my hands. I looked at my hands and focused on my palms. Beneath the skin, I could see a glow if I thought hard enough about it.
At least there was that. I didn't want to fire at anything else anytime soon, I had scared enough people for the time being, but I was glad it didn't seem too complex to conjure.
I pointed one of my hands into the air and squinted my eyes tightly, as if I risked blowing myself up. I focused on my palm and tensed up my entire arm to brace for the shot.
A yellow shot of light flew high into the air before vanishing somewhere in the night sky. For the first time in hours, I smiled. Whatever bad came of this, I felt that overall it was a win for me.
I had powers. Legit superpowers.
Just to make sure it was all real, I took five more shots, just because. Why not? It was fun. It was novel. It cheered me up.
Unfortunately, it also gave anyone who may have been looking for me at the time a big bright beacon telling them exactly where to start searching. But until there was a reason, until it actually happened, who would think that there would be someone out hunting for them? Let alone a group of armed people.
I was lucky. I saw them coming before they were close enough to shoot me. The look in my eye must have emboldened them further, because they started talking instead of just taking me out. I couldn't dodge bullets or survive a shotgun blast to the chest.
"Well look at this," One of the men said. They were all dressed like they were ready for real combat, not just for a night out terrorizing anyone too different from them to be tolerated. I wasn't lucky enough for this to be some good old-fashioned racist harassment, "Another little mutant shit thinks just because he has powers, the world is his playground."
I was not about to be a victim. Not that night.
Their guns weren't pointed at me just yet. They were likely waiting for me to say something try and casually persuade them against violence. Screw that. I put my hands up, the glow visible behind my palms, "I shoot blasts of light outta my hands," I told them, "You might have guns, but I've got enough of a buzz to make this really hard on all of you. You want some? Come get some."
All I needed to see was a twitch from one of them. I fired and hit two of them right in the chest. They didn't explode, and I didn't put a hole in either of them. Weird. You would have figured that if I could knock a cable car off of its rigging, a blast from me would be quite fatal.
The third gunman dropped his gun in fright at the sudden counterattack. When he scrambled to pick it back up, I blasted him before he could get his hands on it and stand up straight. In the face. He didn't move again.
This was now the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to me. I was scared that I'd been attacked so callously, in public. I was scared that I might have killed someone.
"I know how you must be feeling right now, but don't be alarmed, Mr. Marcher."
And to top it off, I was scared because I had a voice in my head that didn't belong to my own thoughts. My opinion of myself was pretty healthy, but it hadn't gotten to the point where I referred to myself as 'mister'.
"I'm afraid you'll have to wait until later to have your existential crisis. You're in danger."
Yes, magic lady in my head. I had been aware of that already. The two guys with guns I blew halfway across the park and the third one that will probably need a facelift after what I did were good indicators of that..
"Oh you poor, ignorant thing. You have no idea. We can help you."
"You're a voice in my head. How can you help me?" I asked out loud in the complete silence of the outdoors, "Wait a minute. Why am I talking to you? I should probably be running."
Maybe because I wanted to believe that this was a real person, someone who could help me. Even if I wasn't in danger at the moment the way this lady was saying, it was coming. If not today, it would happen later. And it would likely involve my family.
"Seems like you've answered your own question, darling," The fact that my own sense of desperation seemed to amuse this woman aside, it didn't seem like she was getting out of my head anytime soon, "And to answer your next one to keep from wasting more time, my name is Emma Frost, and we are the X-Men."
The X-Men. Like, the superhero team made up of mutants.
…
Well why didn't she just lead with that?
"What do you want me to do?"
"First of all, don't fire another shot. After all the trouble we went through to find you, we'd hate to have to clean up what's left of you once the FoH swarm on you."
Gross, blunt, and morbid as it was, the message was received.
"Good boy. Now, do you think you can get yourself out without getting into another fight? You stick out like a sore thumb when you use your powers."
It couldn't have been that bad. I just got these kickass powers and was starting to feel good about them. Now I couldn't use them again? Admittedly, I wasn't sure how well they would work for a quiet getaway though. I hadn't had a reason to make a habit out of that sort of thing in the past. I could try though.
"Outstanding. Just give yourself a good headstart. Get out of there and head due north. That would be to your current left, in case you were wondering."
All I needed to hear. If there was a God, I hoped he or she was with me right then. With a little prayer, I took off running. Right after the racket from my powers, I heard orders and directions being barked. No doubt the voices belonged to friends of the armed creeps that had meant to make an example out of me. Before I could turn my head to see what did it, I got an earful inside of my head.
"No. Go. Listen to every word I say. Do what I say when I say it, don't stop for anything, and you'll be fine."
Angry yells and cut rate military jargon got my attention and I took off down the street.
"Left. Cut through that parking lot. To your right. Clear that wall, and mind your step on the other side. It's a tad steep."
The voice seemed to know when I was coming up on any particular intersection, side street, or a driveway with a fence at the back I could hop to put more distance between me and whoever was after me.
The streets were empty enough that when I heard the sound of a powerful engine getting closer and closer to me, my heart leapt into my throat.
"Calm down. Keep running," No problems there, "Between those two houses. Cut down that alley."
I had no idea why. It wasn't small enough to keep a vehicle from getting through, and within a matter of seconds a set of high beams were shining on my back.
I could hear, feel the massive truck getting closer. I didn't have time to react. I put my hands up, prepared to try and blast it. I hadn't fired a shot as powerful as the one that damaged the cable car since I'd first done it. That moment would have been a good time for it though.
Otherwise, I would have been roadkill.
And then, just like that, there was no need.
Something dropped down from the roof of one of the homes onto the roof of the truck. Whatever it was, it had three wicked-looking claws in each hand.
Those claws didn't so much as cut through the top of that truck as they outright shredded it. Then it was time for the people inside. Jeez. Those screams. Those guys never had much of a chance.
I mean, they were trying to kill me and everything, so screw them. But I didn't need to see or hear most of what I did that night. The high beams from the vehicle never went off, so I saw limbs fly and blood splatter on the walls and the ground.
I got a good look at that and decided, yeah, I definitely wasn't the badass I thought I was when this confrontation started. Getting shot at in the first place brought my ego down a few notches, and then watching a clawed tornado tear them apart like pinatas knocked me down a few more for good measure.
Having powers didn't mean crap.
Whatever was ripping apart those guys, I didn't want any part of it. As if I needed another reason to run faster.
"Nope. Nope. Nope," I repeated to myself to give something that wasn't dismember-ey to focus on as I turned to run again, "Frost, get me out of here before that thing tears my head off!"
"No, he's… ugh. Well, at least you're a decent enough listener. I did say not to stop for anything. You certainly are moving faster now."
She couldn't have been telling me - without telling me - that thing was on my side.
"That 'thing' is called Wolverine, and yes he is, Mr. Marcher. Take a right at that intersection."
Whatever. I still wasn't going to turn around and say hi. Mostly because of the not-so-stray bullets that went through a mailbox as I rounded a corner on-command. I turned my head and saw a small group of guys toting assault weapons.
"Take cover!"
I didn't need to be told again. My dive over the trunk of the nearest car wasn't as graceful as I would have liked. I tore up the skin on one of my arms on the ground after I fell off of the other side, but better to get a nasty scrape than a bullet in the ass.
From a staging point across the street they opened fire on me, and it was all I could do to stay flat on the ground as the sounds of gunshots and bullets flying through my cover rang in my ears. They had to have been being cautious as they didn't know what I could do. Otherwise they would have rushed the car and filled me with lead.
"Keep your head down and wait. Help is coming."
That sounded all well and good, but I had a hard time sitting still and doing nothing. There was a much better chance of something going wrong if I left it up to someone else, at least in my own mind.
Now don't get me wrong. I wasn't about to get up and challenge the guys with guns to a fair-and-square duel in the middle of one of San Francisco's residential areas - I liked not getting shot in the face for being stupid, thank you. But waiting for things to happen instead of being proactive made me fidgety, even if I didn't know what exactly I could do to help make anything better.
I guess it was a part of me that liked having control of my own destiny and being responsible for myself. If matters involving me were in my hands, I felt like I had a better chance than if I left them to someone else who wouldn't have been nearly as invested.
Bullets kept flying my way, but fortunately, I didn't have to get up and put myself in danger for what I wanted to do. With my powers, I peeked over the car and held one of my hands out, firing a blast that knocked the car they were taking cover behind right into their faces.
Getting punched in the face by a car wasn't pleasant, I would imagine. While they were shaking off the cobwebs, that gave me plenty of time to make a play.
The gunfire stopped long enough for me to screw with the lock to get myself inside and hotwire the thing. They hadn't turned the engine to swiss cheese, even if they'd done so to the chassis, and that was enough of a break for me to get out of there. Thirty good seconds.
So maybe I could barely put up a fight to protect myself, but I wasn't exactly a sitting duck either. If there was a detection system for smugness, it would have been going off inside of that car because of me. I could feel how large the grin on my face was. It was short-lived.
"Take a left."
"Holy shit!" The scary guy from before that had turned the soldiers in the alley to mincemeat had somehow gotten into the backseat of the borrowed car without me noticing, "Where did you come from?"
He wore a yellow and blue outfit with an interesting mask design on his face. The patterns were stained red with the blood of his… our enemies, "That's a longer story than we've got time for, kid. Left."
Whatever. I wasn't going to argue with someone who shredded through a hummer like it was a tin can. I sagged down in my seat and tried to focus my swimming vision. After the whole adrenaline dump of that chase, I was spent, and what I wanted, almost as much as getting out of there was figuring out what was happening.
"Okay, what was all of that?"
"Really not the time right now. We're still being chased, kid."
"Come on, throw me a bone. It's not like I'm gonna wreck while you're explaining."
The universe, spot on with its timing, saw fit to try and prove me wrong by sending another hummer. This one plowed directly into the side of our car.
In the end, I was still right. I didn't wreck while he was explaining. We didn't even get that far into the conversation.