Gifted

  Emma Frost, who had introduced Scott, was now seated in the chair Scott had vacated. She was clothed in her customarily provocative style, revealing considerable midriff and cleavage. Even her lipstick was white to match her clothing. She’d had no trouble holding the students’ attention…particularly the boys’. And then she’d turned the mike over to Scott and everything had gone to hell.

  “I’m not quite as organized as Hank is,” he’d begun. “I thought I would speak more…X-temporaneously.”

  He waited for the laughter. There was, instead, deathly silence, broken only by a forced chuckle here and there.

  Are you done yet? Emma’s voice sounded in his head.

  Shut up.

  Technically I’m not talking.

  Shut up anyway.

  All right, then.

  He then proceeded to squander whatever good will Emma and Hank had built up for him with the students.

  “First of all, I want you to know that if you have any questions, you can always come to me. There will be many confusing things that you will find…uhm…confusing.” He winced. At least his face was covered with a visor, specially created for him with a shield made of ruby-quartz crystal that contained the powerful beams in his eyes. “All of you are here,” he continued, “because you have an extra power or, if you will, X-tra power. That’s where the term X-Men comes from.”

  A hand immediately shot up.

  Scott was surprised. He hadn’t expected a question that quickly. “Yes, uhm…” He racked his brains, trying to remember. “Uhm…Julian?”

  “Kevin,” the youngster corrected him.

  “Right, Kevin. What’s your question?”

  “I thought it was after Professor Xavier. You know: X-avier?”

  “Actually, it’s pronounced Zavier. Like with a Z.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, absolutely. Now, as I—”

  Another hand shot up. “Yes, uh…Austin.”

  “Dallas.”

  “Yes, right, Dallas…”

  “Is it pronounced Mag-nee-toe or Mag-net-oh?”

  “The first one.”

  Five more hands shot up.

  Emma Frost rose slightly from her chair and said coolly, “Let’s save questions for the end of the talk.”

  All the hands promptly went down.

  Scott went on to discuss the proud history of the school…the hopes of Professor Xavier…the sorts of challenges they could be expected to face…the social responsibility of mutantkind…

  And delivered all of it in an uncomfortable monotone that suggested he would rather be anywhere else doing anything else right now.

  The words continued to emerge from his mouth, but he could see the interest of the students flagging with every passing syllable. He wasn’t engaging them. He was coming across like a big stiff in a redtinted visor.

  Finally, unable to endure it any longer, he said, “So, uh…if there are any questions now…?”

  None were forthcoming. He glanced sidelong at Emma. Her face was an utter deadpan. He realized he couldn’t be sure whether the kids simply didn’t want to prolong the agony, or if Emma was beaming mental commands into their heads along the lines of, If a single one of you asks one bloody question, you will not only regret you were born, you’ll forget you were born.

  “Well, okay then. Thank you for listening,” said Scott. There was a determined attempt at applause as Scott took his seat on the far right. Hank looked at him, face inscrutable. In a low voice, Scott leaned toward him and, indicating his index cards, said, “I had a whole section on civic pride. But I thought it’d be better to wrap it up.”

  “Good call,” said Hank.

  Emma had once again taken the podium. “Well,” she said, looking with mild irritation toward the empty seat awaiting an occupant who had not yet arrived, “it would seem the proceedings will be ending a bit earlier than—”

  Suddenly there was a collective gasp as a young woman’s head emerged through the wall.

  It was understandable. Most of the students had come from lives where they had been compelled to hide what they were. Letting on, even for an instant, that they were gifted with the mutant gene that made them Homo superior would be enough to target them for unending harassment. So suppressing any use of their powers had become second nature to many of them. As a result, they were not prepared for such casual demonstration of mutant abilities.

  “Hi,” said the young woman. Her face had a distinct deer-in-the-headlights look to it as she eased the rest of her body into the room. “It’s possible that I’m late.”

  “Quite so,” said Emma Frost, looking haughtily at her while gesturing toward the empty chair. Then Emma turned back to the audience. “This, children, is Kitty Pryde, who apparently feels the need to make a grand entrance.”

  Kitty didn’t sit immediately. She was half a head shorter than Emma, but she squared her shoulders and made herself seem bigger, like a cat feeling threatened. “I’m sorry,” she said, not sounding at all sorry. Her gaze flickered up and down Emma’s revealing outfit. “I was busy remembering to put on all my clothes.”

  There were loud hoots of laughter from the students, and this time even an annoyed stare from Emma’s icy blue eyes wasn’t quite able to contain it.

  “So gushingly glad you could join us,” Emma said, and then turned back to the audience to make sure the last of the snickering was dying down. “Miss Pryde will be teaching advanced computational theory, as well as acting as a student advisor and liaison to the administrative staff.”

  Scott leaned over and whispered to Kitty as she took her seat, “It’s great to see you.”

  “Sorry about the timing,” she whispered back. “Did I miss the Sorting Hat?”

  “Just my remarks, and Scott’s scintillating introduction speech,” said Hank.

  Scott decided to take the comment in stride. “Even I was bored.”

  Emma said to the students, “Since Professor Xavier is away on sabbatical, Mr. Summers and myself will be acting heads of school. Doctor McCoy and Miss Pryde will round out the senior staff along with Logan, who is…elsewhere.”

  Kitty leaned toward Hank again. “What does she mean ‘elsewhere’?” she whispered.

  “It means we’ve narrowed it down to ‘else.’”

  They then realized that Emma had stopped speaking. Instead, she had turned around at the podium and was staring right at them. “Are we done?” she asked. “Or Miss Pryde, if you’re interested in directing any remarks to the students…?”

  “No, thanks, I’m good,” said Kitty.

  Emma nodded, then continued her remarks to the class. “Now, this is a place of learning. Not just about your mutant gifts, but about the world. Respect for your teachers, mutant and human alike, will be expected of all of you. Control of your powers. The safety of those around you, is of paramount importance. Violence of any kind will not be tolerated.”

  THREE

  “BRING it on. Who wants a piece?”

  The bar was prime fight territory. It was small and squalid and filled with large men who had been drinking considerably and both smelled and looked like it. Country music filtered scratchily through the speakers, and no one ever really walked on the floor, which hadn’t been scrubbed in possibly forever, because the inch or so of caked dirt prevented their shoes from actually touching the ground. Rumor had it that a guy from the Board of Health had been by recently to check the place, but supposedly he had simply stroked out upon seeing it and never had the opportunity to file his report.

  The challenger at that particular moment was at least a head shorter than even the shortest of the behemoths chugging back beer. His black hair seemed to have a life of its own, as did his sideburns. His growling words betrayed hints of a Canadian accent.

  “Logan, knock it off,” said the bartender, a normally cheerful man named Clancy. “Come on…”

  “You come on,” Logan retorted. “I heard him,” and he pointed at one of the largest men, a guy w
ith a shaved and tattooed head, leaning against the pool table with a half-filled mug. “I heard what he said.”

  “Logan—”

  “I believe I heard him say,” Logan over-enunciated each word, “muttering under his breath—and these ears catch everything, trust me—that he’d never seen a sawed-off runt drink so much. Am I right?”

  The bruiser cleared his throat and said, a little nervously, “Yeah, I did say that—”

  “And that’s gonna cost y—”

  “But,” he added quickly, “I was talking about him.”

  He pointed, and Logan’s gaze flickered to a darkened corner of the bar. A little person, less than four feet tall, was sitting there with three empty mugs around him. He looked up with bleary eyes and, fixing them on the bruiser, said angrily, “My girlfriend dumped me. You got a problem with that, jerk?”

  “No, no, we’re cool,” said the bruiser hurriedly. “Just me muttering. Didn’t mean to broadcast it. Sorry, pal. How about I buy you a pint?”

  The little person considered it, then said, “Long as you don’t make jokes about half-pints.”

  At which point the bruiser, the little person, and several others in the bar laughed aloud, all of which seemed to defuse matters until Logan stepped to within an inch of the bruiser’s face and growled, “And you think that settles things?”

  The bruiser gulped slightly. Everyone stood utterly paralyzed. Working to keep his voice as flat and neutral as possible, he said, “If you want, I’ll buy you one, too.”

  Logan’s nostrils flared like an animal’s. “I smell fear coming off you. In waves. You that scared of me, bub? How about your friends? They scared, too? Is that what it’s gonna take? Telling you what a bunch of total wimps you are, so that you’ll stand up for yourself?”

  The bruiser spoke barely above a whisper. “Seriously…the offer of a drink’s still open…”

  “No, it’s not.” Clancy’s voice cracked sharply across the bar that was otherwise silent save for Logan’s barely controlled fury. “He’s cut off. You’re cut off, Logan.”

  Slowly Logan’s furious gaze turned toward Clancy. Then he walked toward the bartender, one slow step at a time, like a gunslinger, until he was right in front of the bar. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Which word was unclear? ‘Cut’ or ‘off’?”

  “You can’t cut me off, Clancy.” There was no pleading in his voice. Logan was incapable of pleading. Instead it was a flat statement.

  “I sure can. You want to keep having liquor served to you? Go to another bar.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why the hell not? There’s plenty of other bars around.”

  Logan paused, his jaw twitching, and then he admitted in a low voice, “They all cut me off.”

  Clancy didn’t understand. “What? You mean today?”

  “Yeah.”

  Clancy took in what Logan was saying, and then called over to the bruiser that Logan had just threatened. “Jerry. Take over the bar for a minute, will ya?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Clancy came around the bar as Jerry slipped in behind. He gestured for Logan to follow him, and Logan did so.

  Clancy brought him around back to a storage area and turned to face him. “You telling me you’ve been drinking all day?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How the hell are you even standing up? I mean, I figured you were drunk, trying to pick a fight—”

  “I ain’t drunk.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’d have to be—”

  “Wanna hook me up to a breathalyzer? I’m stone-cold sober, Clancy.”

  Clancy looked him in the eyes. He stared for quite some time, then said, “Holy God, you are. How is that possible? Back in the bar, you were slurring your words, you were kind of wobbling…”

  “Wishful thinking. My…metabolism…it fights me when it comes to getting hammered.” It seemed a less complicated explanation than a mutant healing power that repaired any damage to his system so quickly that it was practically impossible for him to get drunk. He saw the way Clancy was looking at him. “You got something to say? Spit it out.”

  Clearing his throat, Clancy said, “Look…Logan…I’ve known you for a while. And I always known you’re not, y’know…”

  “I’m not what?”

  “You’re different. Okay? I dunno what your deal is, and you know what? I don’t care. It’s none o’ my beeswax. You pay as you go, never run up a tab, which is more than I can say for some of these characters, including Jerry who’s probably single-handedly gone through a quarter of my stock by now. You usually keep to yourself, and you’re decent company when you’re in a talkative mood. Whatever else you are, whatever else you do…zei gezunt, you get what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I get it.”

  “But now you’re picking fights with guys? Why the hell are you doing that?”

  “That’s not the question,” Logan said irritably. “The question is, why won’t they fight? Them and the guys in other bars. I used to get into some pretty good scraps in bars. Now I insult them to their faces and they won’t even defend themselves.”

  It was all Clancy could do not to laugh. “Of course not! Word’s gotten around about you, Logan. Hell, a couple of places I know keep a picture of you behind the bar just to warn people off. Word’s out that you don’t mess with the short Canadian guy with the mutton chops. No offense.”

  Logan considered it. “Nah. That’s a fair description.” He looked almost forlorn. “Nobody?”

  “Nobody,” he said firmly. “I mean, jeez, man, you’ve sent guys to the emergency room and you walk away without a mark on you. Guys have pride, sure, but they’re not suicidal. They figure you can call them all the names you want, but at least they’ll come out of the evening in one piece, and their egos don’t wind up needing a full-body cast and a hundred stitches if they get banged around. So you can go around saying what you want to pretty much anyone you want, but nobody’s gonna take a swing at you because Thanksgiving’s not that far off, and they don’t feel like having their turkey fed to them through a tube. You get it now?”

  “Yeah, I get it, okay? This has been real great, Clancy.” There was a door with an exit sign on the other side of the room. “I’ll just be on my way, okay?”

  He headed toward the door, but stopped when Clancy said, “It’s a woman, ain’t it?”

  He didn’t look back at Clancy, keeping his face away from him. “What makes you say that?”

  “Because it’s always a woman. Always. What’d she do to you? Cheat on you? Dump you?”

  “She died,” Logan said quietly. “Five years ago. Today.”

  “Man, I’m sorry to hear that. What happened, if you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Rather not say. Trust me, ya wouldn’t believe me anyway. See ya later, Clancy.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, okay. And Logan…good luck getting drunk or picking a fight.”

  “Don’t worry ’bout that,” said Logan. “I’m a pretty resourceful guy. I’m sure I’ll find a way to pull off one or the other.”

  And with that, he walked out and let the door slam shut behind him.

  FOUR

  EMMA Frost had warned that violence at the school would not be tolerated in any form. That caution was still ringing in the air when the Sentinel attacked.

  There had been no warning whatsoever. One moment Emma had been finishing her speech, and the next the entire ceiling of the room was being torn away. The sun’s rays filtered through in a haze of red, but no one paid any attention because they were busy dodging the debris that was tumbling from the ceiling.

  Many of them had, at some point or other, seen the mutant-hunting Sentinels on television. But that hadn’t really conveyed just how big the damned things truly were. This particular Sentinel was gargantuan, and seemed even bigger to the terrified students. The blue-and-purple robot was twenty feet tall, yet some would later swear that it was bigger than the Washington M
onument.

  And there was another one behind the first one, looking down with its expressionless face and perpetually glowing yellow eyes.

  A handful of the students actually responded in a manner that was appropriate to beings of their nature and power. One young boy left the ground, flying as quickly as he could between the bits of falling debris. Another student, an Asian girl with a look that was both frightened and determined, created a force field that conformed to the shape of her body, as if it were some manner of energized armor.

  The vast majority, however, scrambled to get out of the way of the oncoming threat. “Mutants targeted,” rumbled the nearer Sentinel, and several of the students were knocked off their feet and nearly trampled in the rush to get away. The Sentinels, they knew, had been created specifically to seek and destroy mutants.

  Scott Summers was on his feet. Memories of his boring speech were immediately banished from the minds of the students as he snapped open his visor and they beheld Cyclops in action. A red beam of energy lashed out, blasting into the nearest of the Sentinels, staggering the gigantic robot but not stopping him. Hank McCoy was yanking clear his necktie, all semblance of the erudite and urbane individual from minutes earlier gone and replaced by a snarling creature that truly fit the name “Beast.”

  Kitty Pryde backed up, phasing right through her chair. Her power gave her limited offensive capabilities, but she was studying the oncoming robot carefully, looking for some sort of weakness, some opportunity she could seize to fight back against the unwanted intruder.

  And as people screamed and energy blasts ripped through the air and the Beast unleashed a defiant roar, and as the students were nearly killing each other just to get clear of the terrifying, towering robot that was coming right at them…

  …Emma calmly touched a device sitting atop her podium.

  Just like that, the Sentinels faded away. The debris likewise disappeared and the ceiling fixed itself, the hole vanishing to be replaced by a flat sheet of metal.