It's a Mad World.

“You seem to have calmed down,” Kate Pryde said, while watching the dark haired young man pushing his toes into the sands of Hellfire Cove.

“Yeah, sorry for the hysterics. You’d think I’d never seen someone die and come back before, though this is the first time it’s been me.” Xander explained. But in his defense, waking up in weird gold yoke, naked, had been a new experience.

“Yeah, tell me about it. My first death didn’t work out too well. I couldn’t seem to figure out how to exit my egg, so after about a dozen tries Emma finally realized what the deal was and poof….I was back.” She gestured to herself.

“So hysterics aside, how are you doing? Really?”

Xander just wiggled his toes in the warm sand, looking out over the beach. So many people – mutants, were just swimming and playing in the water. It looked so peaceful. He couldn’t recall that last time he’d been able to just take a break and take in the sights.

“Yeah – I’m getting used to some things. I’d lost an eye a few years back, glad to have that returned. I noticed all my scars are gone, the soreness from broken bones. Brand new me, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Shadow Cat agreed, “it just takes some getting used too. The birthing eggs are relatively new. A lot of mutants are just getting used to the idea, but we’ve had people dead for years….even decades. There seems to be an adjustment period.”

“On that note,” she said with a chipper tone, “your results came back. We’re happy to say no one changed your DNA, making you a mutant by accident. You really do seem to be carrying a primitive, inactive X-gene. I guess in a few generations your world will have something new to deal with.”

He nodded, thinking about what he’d heard just in passing. One of the kids with butterfly wings had clued him in to a little world history.

Racism, genocide, experimentation, Jim Crow laws for mutants. It seemed like this world’s people had skipped over hatred over the colors of each others skin, who they loved, or the beings they worshiped, and focused on hating those with different strains of DNA.

The kid with butterfly wings had been nailed to a cross at 12 before being set on fire.

If he squinted his eyes, Xander could see him flying over the clear blue ocean, dropping buckets of water on unsuspecting swimmers. He could almost hear the kid’s laughter.

“So what’s that mean for me? Do I earn a one way ticket into that fighting pit, getting killed by that guy with a bucket on his head, so that I can wake up with an active X-gene?” Xander questioned.

Smiling, Kate just shook her head, “you know….a friend of mine stole his helmet and pissed in it a few weeks back. Magneto’s been in a mood ever since.”

“But to answer your question, no fighting pit. That’s reserved for mutant’s who’s powers were taken from them. A chance to stick a middle finger up in the air and go down swinging.” She shrugged.

“It’s – more brutal in some ways, but we aren’t having a run on suicides, anymore. M-day was tough for a lot of folks.”

“So what to do with me?” Xander asked, before walking further into the beach and finally dipping his toes in the water. “Mutant Pride, I’m all for it. Everyone deserves a place they can call home. But if I’m not actually a mutant….”

“We’re not kicking you out,” Shadow Cat said as she followed him, watching him as he watched the kids playing. “We have teleporters taking in your…other worldly aura, and looking for your home. It just might take a while. We have a lot of pans on the stove at the moment.”

Faith, his team, Xander’s heart ached. He remembered all too well the pain of losing someone in the field.

“Krakoa provides, often times literally. If you ask the island, it’ll make you an apartment, or house, hell it’ll make you a castle if you want.”

“Or we could put you in one of the complexes, the New Mutants have one, the Bone Yard’s got plenty of room, if you want we can even set up a flower on the moon so you can be neighbors with the Summer’s family.” Just thinking about Cyclops’s reaction made her smile.

“As for your inactive X-gene…,” Kate touched his shoulder to make sure she had his attention, “we actually have someone you might want to talk too.”


~~~

“Primitive, very primitive.” Sage said as she looked Xander up from head to toe.

“Gee, thanks. And here I thought I’d stopped dragging my knuckles on the floor.” He quipped.

The blue haired Asian woman’s lips twitched, but she fought off a smile. Xander couldn’t see her eyes from behind her dark red glasses, but it looked like they had built in computer screens, he could make out lines of numbers flashing across the lenses.

“She didn’t mean you, well not entirely. Sage can actually see our X-genes, one of her abilities is to mutate them to a higher degree before activating them.” Shadow Cat explained.

She’d taken him from the beach to Sage’s lab right after he’d agreed to being activated. Happily, Beast wasn’t present. Just thinking about that gave her heart a pang. Kate had so looked up to the bouncing blue guy as a kid.

Now he reminded her more of Sinister then the friendly cookie monster genius she’d originally thought of him as.

“How’s that work?” Xander asked while looking around the lab. It looked like an underground cave, more or less, but there was a wall of video screens, computer screens, dozens of them. He couldn’t imagine anyone could keep up with it all.

“Mutations come in four relative…flavors. Physical mutations, like Kate and her ability to phase through solid matter. They can change your appearance, enhancing regular functions like strength or speed, or even growing wings or bone claws.”

“Energy conductors, people who create in some form like…shooting force beams from their eyes, lightning from their hands, changing potential energy into kinetic energy until it explodes.” Sage explained, as she finally started circling Xander.

“Psionics, telekinetics, people who can control aspects of energy or matter without creating it within themselves. Like making and controlling the weather, or metal.”

“Like bucket head.” Xander said.

“Kate!” Sage exclaimed, despite her lip twitching again.

“Hey, don’t look at me. I didn’t say nothin.” Kate Pryde said with her hands up in defense.

“It literally looks like a bucket. I can’t be the only person who’s said this.” The dark haired Scooby stated.

“You aren’t.” Sage said with a shake of her head, having gotten distracted.

“And the last is paths, once we’d have put telepaths with psionics, but there are just too many different kinds now that they get a class of their own. Telepaths read minds, empaths read emotion, telempath can do both, techopaths, like myself, can also read computer data. And so many different kinds it’d be impossible to list them all.”

“So what does that mean for me and my caveman gene?” Xander questioned.

Sage, stopping her circling and standing in front of him, explained, “I can mutate the gene into a higher form. We have a rating scale, Omega for mutations without limits, Alpha’s with extreme limits, betas, gammas, ext. I can take a non-active beta mutation and wake it up, while forcing it into growing into an alpha level.”

“So, gamma is probably where your mutation is sitting. I’ll boost it to beta, maybe Alpha, depending. And we go from there. If you’re willing?”

“There’s no pressure, Xander,” Kate said, “like I said, we’re going to help you either way. But with what you’ve said about your home world, powers might be helpful.”

“Yeah, if I end up with one of the cool ones. I saw a kid who was just a floating brain, or that one guy who vomits acid.”

“….theres actually a few people who do that.” Sage stated behind her blood red lenses.

“Yeah, that’d just be my luck.” Xander said with a shrug.

“Screw it, mutant me up.”