outfoX
❅ ❅ ❅
1 year ago
The Strucker's had invited me to the park to do something for the summer.
Andy rode his skateboard, while Lauren and I followed.
As Lauren watches Andy do his skateboarding tricks, I was on the ground, already sweating and feeling tired.
What I've learn from my powers were that the heat was my biggest weakness, obviously, so summer's sun wasn't doing me any favors.
Heat makes me have the urges of using my abilities, I start to sweat, become exhausted, and I start to hallucinate a bit.
Stupidly, I wanted to come because the weather said it would be partly cloudy and have a small breeze... clearly, they lied.
It was super sunny, no clouds, and no breeze.
"Hey, you good, Lux?" Andy asked me, still on his board.
"Yeah," I sigh, wiping the small sweat from my forehead, "I'm just not use to the sun."
"That's because you never go outside, unless it's like negative 3 degrees."
"Shut up."
"I can't say I agree with you. I like the heat." Lauren comments, helping me get up off the grass.
Andy did a simple trick and then got an idea.
"Wanna try that?" He asked his sister.
"No, I'm not gonna do that." She tells.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't skateboard."
"Yeah, you can." He insisted. "Here. Back foot on the tail, front foot halfway up the deck."
The blonde girl looked at me.
I replied, "Seems fun."
"Yeah. Pop and flick..." He demonstrated, "like a karate kick, okay?"
"I'm gonna fall, no." She says.
I start to chuckle, but Andy still was determined to make her try.
"Trust me. I'm-I'll be here. I can catch you. Look, Lux will help, too."
"Promise?" Lauren looked at the both of us, suspiciously.
"Yeah."
"Sure."
Both Andy and I tell her.
She seemed satisfied. "Help me up."
I held onto her hand, while the Strucker boy grabbed the other, to stead her.
"Ready?" She asked.
I nodded while Andy gives a little 'yeah', as we both let go of her hand.
She then did the jump, but kicked the skateboard away from her, making her fall off.
Andy, though, was quick to grab her hand, tightly.
Their hands started the glow...
I didn't know if it was because of the heat getting to me or if I was actually seeing it in front of my eyes.
They both let go as Lauren regained her balance.
"A-Are you two okay?" I asked them.
Before they could reply, Reed called us.
"Hey! You guys all right over there?"
"Yeah." Lauren, walking away from us, responded, "Messing around."
I gave a confused look at Andy, who was staring it is hands in a observing weird way.
"Did-Did you see that?" He looked to me.
"See what?" I raised my eyebrow.
Andy then shakes his head, to clear his mind. "I-Nevermind, I think I was just seeing something."
With that, he made his way to retrieve his skateboard.
I stood their looking at both Strucker children, who both gave a look that something was on their minds.
Of course, it never clicked to me that what I saw was the exact thing both siblings saw, as well.
§
"Hey." I hear someone whisper. "Lux, Lauren. You guys awake?"
"I've been awake." I tell him, sitting up from my bed, in the dead of night.
"Yeah." His sister answers. "I can't stop thinking about what Dad said. About Otto being... like us."
It was revealed that Otto was a mutant, that he cleared the X-gene from Reed when he was a kid, the leukemia that he had was actually the X-gene erasing from his body, but it must've been back because it was pasted down to Lauren and Andy.
"Not just him." Andy responds, he gets a book from his pillow, and sits by Lauren. "Here, check this out."
I was curious about this so decided to go and follow him, sitting beside him.
"I found this in the library." He says, displaying the book.
"You know where the library is here? Who are you and what have you done with Andy?" The blonde joked.
"Ha ha. I had to find Lux and surprise, surprise, she was reading."
"What, I can not read the literature of mutant authors?" I smiled.
Andy then found the page he was looking for.
"Look, this section's on the 1950. Andrea and Andreas von Strucker."
We all looked to see a woman and man, with a picture of them holding hands.
To me, you could see the resemblance with them and with Andy and Lauren.
"They called her themselves 'Fenris'?" Lauren points out.
"I think that means 'wolf' in some language." I tell them.
"Oh, my god." Lauren stopped and pointed to one horrific photo. "They did that?"
"Yeah. They combined power by holding hands. They wiped out an entire building full of people in seconds." The boy informs.
"That's crazy." I mutter.
"This is our family history." Lauren speaks. "Look, it says here they're 'rumored to be part of a shadowy internal organization called the Hellfire Club.' Does it say what happened to them?"
Andy looked through the pages to find nothing. "I think they disappeared fleeing from the X-Men. They were some of the most powerful mutants ever."
"Yeah. It also says they were monsters."
"Well, I'm just saying-"
"I don't care."
Lauren slapped the book shut. "Go to bed." She tells us.
Before Andy and I were to lay down, I pulled him toward me.
"Hey, can I see that?"
"Yeah, sure. Why?" He asked me, giving me the book.
"I'm just curious, you know me." I say, giving him a kiss on the cheek when I receive the book. "I'll be in the dining room. Night, Andy."
"Night, Lux."
I made my way to the windows, where the moonlight shined just right for me to see the pages.
I looked and looked, until I saw the 40s section.
There on the pages was a man, a man named Laurence Mycroft.
I looked further and according to this book: He was one of the most powerful mutant of his time. He had the power of fire. What was so dangerous about him, was that his flames weren't ordinary. The fire he used to destroy buildings and kill people, it was dark red with a black tint to it.
Apparently, an old colleague said that his powers used to be the normal color of orange and bright red, that was until he started to hear slight voices in his head, that would come when he was in crucial times.
Laurence was basically corrupted.
I then remembered what my father had said to me... about how the powers in my family weren't one sided, that I needed a balance to try and control it.
I knew this is what he had meant.
I remembered how the dark my ice was when I killed Willow and Phillip.
My mind was just crazed over what history my family had.
I read more and more, as much as I could.
My family is well known for their abilities to be around the elements, like water, air, fire, and earth.
Laurence Mycroft has vowed for his last words, before he was executed by purposely drowning in an ice river, was that every mutant in the name of Mycroft would bestow a power by the laws of natural elements.
I quickly shut the book and went back to my room, where I saw Andy already knocked out and the same with Lauren.
Quietly, I slipped the book under Andy's pillow and went back to sleep, with the thought of Lawrence in my head.
§
It was loud but dark.
My vision came up to see my brother, in a cell and with a collar around his neck. He looked tired and completely helpless from what power they had over him.
"Jack..." I make my way over to him, looked at every detail he had.
"Jack, what happened?" I asked, pressing myself against the thick plastic windows.
He didn't reply.
"Jack. Jack! Jack!"
His eyes snapped. He looked to where I was, still having a cold monotoned on himself.
He gets up slowly and almost in pain. He walks over to me, looked at me dead in the eyes and didn't say a word.
It looked as though he didn't see me.
"Jack, it's me. Lux! Remember me? Your sister? Jack, please-"
Before I would plead for him any longer, a door opened beside his cell.
Guards were coming in, with heavy amour and guns on them.
They opened Jack's cell, but he didn't move.
"Get out." A guard ordered to my brother.
No reply.
"You son of a bitch!" Another growled, pulling him harshly by his shoulders.
As soon as Jack was out in the open, he screamed.
He seemed in immense pain, but thunder in his palms came into contact with a guard, dropping him to the floor.
The other guard quickly used the butt of the gun to make my brother to down, by hitting him on the head with it.
I wanted to stop them.
"Leave him alone!" I shout, but I couldn't do anything.
The guard was beating the absolute crap out of Jack.
Blood started to go everywhere, my screams echoed, and everyone turned into fuzz.
"Lux!" Andy exclaimed to me.
My eyes snapped open as my body jolts up in panic.
Andy quickly went to my side, saying that it was all a dream.
My eyes just started to water.
I just couldn't unsee what I had dreamt, it was like if it was on repeat.
I looked around me to see tiny spiked grey ice coming from the bed frame, as if I activated my powers as I slept.
"D-Did I do this?" I stuttered to the Stucker boy.
He sighed, "Hey. When I woke up they were larger, but they then started to shrink and become just tiny little ones."
I put my hands on my face in exhaustion.
That dream... I swear, it didn't feel like a dream.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" Andy asked me.
All I did was shake my head 'no' as I hugged the Strucker for dear life, he hugged me back, tightly, making me feel secure once again.
§
"So, you guys are for real right now? Like, seriously serious?"
"Yes, that's-that's why we thought we should... deal with this as a family."
Reed and Caitlin called all of us over for a meeting.
Reed had explained to us that Andy and Lauren's great grandparents have the same power as them, and they wanted to get the deadly power combination to be dealt with right away.
"I think we learned the hard way that discovering mutant abilities by accident isn't ideal." Cate finished her sentence.
Reed adds in, "Look, it might be nothing. My dad could possibly be wrong. Just because the von Strucker twins could do it doesn't necessarily mean-"
"What if he's right?" Lauren asked them. "You want us to destroy something?"
The Strucker parents were quick to dismiss that.
"Th-That's... That's why we want to test it in the vault. Just to... to see if there's anything there." Cate explained.
The siblings looked at each other, for an agreement.
They both agreed, standing up and making their way to the front of the room, as I stayed back with Cate and Reed.
The siblings held hands and waited.
We all waited and waited, but nothing happened to them.
"This is weird." Lauren comments.
"But is there... anything? You guys don't feel nothing?" I asked them.
"Yeah. The sweat from Andy's hand."
The siblings let go, wiping their hands on their jeans.
"O-Okay. Well, then maybe, there's... there's nothing to worry about. Maybe it's nothing." Cate sighs in relief.
I was almost disappointed in that.
I kinda wanted it to work, it would possibly help the Underground if they discover a different power.
"No. Wait." Andy spoke up, grabbing everyone's attention. "Just give it a chance, okay? Maybe we gotta, like, squeeze harder or something, actually want something to happen. Come on. Please? We got to try."
Lauren went back and held onto Andy's hand.
"Relax, guys. Try to make it happen." I encourage them, quietly.
They both closed their eyes and just by a second, their hands started to glow gold.
I felt a weird sensation around me, it wasn't anything obvious, everything though just seems off.
The siblings stared straight to the vault wall, deadly.
Their held hands were glowing intensely.
Both Cate and Reed notice this, also, and stopped it before it went to far.
Reed ripped the two away from each other, before anything could happen.
The Strucker siblings were in shock from what they had experienced.
"What happened?" I asked them.
"I don't know. It was like..."
"I could feel..."
"Everything around me."
"All we had to do was just push."
Lauren and Andy both answer together.
"I-I don't understand. Did you use the power?" Reed questioned.
"Dad... if we tried..." Lauren goes to Andy. "Did you feel that? Everything coming apart?"
"Kids, what happened?" Cate asked, in worry.
"We were about to bring down the entire building. We would have killed everyone here."
§
"So, what happened in the vault?" Mr. Strucker asked his kids.
We were back at our room. I was standing by the door way, while the Strucker's were trying to figure out what the happened.
"What did you feel, exactly?" Mrs. Strucker adds in.
"Everything around us kind of... just disappeared. And it's like, there wasn't two of us anymore. There was just one." Andy tried to explain.
"It was like... we were seeing out of the same eyes." Lauren agreed.
"You said you could have destroyed a building. How did you know that?"
"I could feel it. Andy pushes things apart, right? I do the opposite, I can pull them together."
"Combined, it was like, we could do whatever we wanted. I mean, we were looking at the wall in front of us, and-and we could have just... vaporized it." The boy getting what Lauren was trying to say.
I then thought about their power... They could actually use it.
Then again, if it were to be too dangerous it could go sideways, but if Andy and Lauren were to control it... They could do marvelous things.
Andy seemed to be having the same idea I had. "Maybe if we practice, we-"
"Practice?" Lauren have him a complexed look.
"What? We can do it, we might as well get better at it."
Reed tried to give advice. "Eh, you've been given a gift, and a power like that could hurt people, you can't just go around using it-"
"So we should just stuff it down and bury it like your dad did? How'd that work out?"
"That's way out of bounds, Andy." Cate scolds.
"Mom. It's who we are, okay? It's who I am."
"Andy, sometimes you can't control your own powers." Reed defends.
I was torn by the two.
I understood both sides.
Yes, the power is dangerous, but that just gives it more of a right to try and control it.
Yes, they should use it, but only when necessary.
I could understand what Andy was thinking, but I feel like this power should be kept controlled and a secret. They shouldn't just use it everyday, but they could at least have the security of trying to control it.
"I see." Andy nodded his head. "So I'm just some kind of monster."
They boy got up and was quick to leave.
"That's not what he meant." Cate tried to clarify.
"At least you guys have one kid you can actually trust." He spat, before coming my way and leaving.
I quickly went right after him.
"Andy."
He just wouldn't listen to me. He just would walk away from me.
Soon, Lauren came at my side.
"Andy!" Lauren calls out.
"What?" The boy turns to us.
"You know they were just trying to protect you guys, right?" I reasoned.
"Yeah, yeah, I totally get it. I'm a freak because I don't hate my powers."
"You think I hated that?" Lauren spoke up. "I've never felt so powerful. It scared me... because it felt good."
"Do you remember that time that happened before?" Andy asked his sister.
"At the park." Lauren and I say at the same time.
"You felt that?" She asked him.
"Yeah. That was before I even knew I was a mutant. I mean... That's when I started messing up at school. It's 'cause I couldn't get it out of my mind."
"Me too." Lauren turned to me. "You saw it happen at the park?"
I rubbed the back of my neck. "Yeah... but I thought I was seeing stuff, the sun was really giving me a hard time, because the heat."
"Look, all I want to do right now is try that again." Andy tells us. "Does that mean... Does that mean we're gonna be like them? The von Struckers?"
Lauren didn't say anything, which made Andy look at me for an answer.
"Honestly... I don't know." I tell him, sincerely.
❅ ❅ ❅