Adaption

"Is that truly all you desire?"

That was what Raven had asked him when he told her what he wanted and Esau didn't really know the answer to that question. He had never really cared about the whole Mutant issue, he knew it was becoming a major problem worldwide, even with only a handful of cases. Most of the time the news only reported those with physical deformations as their mutant abilities.

It had never really interested Esau, he had just gone about his daily life the way he always had. Getting involved in something like this was not on his agenda, but it seemed that wasn't the case this time around.

In the end, Esau didn't really know why he agreed to join Raven and her Brotherhood of Mutants as she called them. If all he wanted was to fight Logan, then surely it would be much easier to do so by joining the X-Men. At least there he would be able to fight Logan much more consistently and if there was anything Esau's time in the boxing gym had proved, it was that he could learn rapidly.

Perhaps he could have done that, but it didn't matter to him.

He didn't like Logan and that was all he needed to know.

The him of the past would have simply stood by and done nothing, let it all happen and keep his head down. But he wasn't the him of the past and he was not the type to let things go easily. He also was not the type to go back on his word and Esau had already said that he would join Raven's Brotherhood of Mutants.

Now here he was, stood outside a relatively large home, nothing too fancy, yet nothing to ignore either. 'Is this the place?' Esau wondered, looking down at the notes he had taken, the address Raven had given him over the phone. 'Yep, this is it.'

Moving up the stairs, Esau went to knock on the door, only for a rush of wind to wash over him, an arm wrapped tightly around his neck. "Who the fuck are you?" A guy asked, Esau looking out of the corner of his eye to see a silver-haired kid leaning against him. There were three more kids moving towards him.

At the front was an average-sized, well-built kid with long black hair.

Behind him, was a smaller, skinny, weaselly-looking kid that seemed permanently hunched over.

The final one was a very large, fat boy currently stuffing his face with a greasy burger.

"Better question." Esau returned, going to grab hold of the guy's arm and pin him to the wall, only for the guy to disappear from sight appearing on the other side of Esau, arm still around his neck. "Who...are you?" Caught off guard by the speed at which the guy moved, Esau didn't let it disturb him for long.

He had already known he would be part of a group of Mutants, someone having superhuman speed was hardly the most shocking thing. From what he remembered, there was a Mutant with the power of magnetism, though the guy's name was something he couldn't quite recall.

"Are you the new guy Mystique was on about?" The lead guy with long black hair asked, moving up the stairs.

"Mystique?" Esau questioned, though he imagined that was possibly Raven from the way it was said. Though he could be wrong, maybe there was someone else here that he didn't know about. "You on about Raven?"

This earned laughs from the four. "Don't let her hear you calling her that. You'll be given a codename soon when we learn about your powers. Outside of school, we're only allowed to refer to one another by them. I'm Lance, my codename is Avalanche, that's Pietro or Quicksilver, and these two here are Todd, aka Toad and Fred aka Blob. What's your name?"

"Esau." He replied simply looking to the group as they were pointed out by Lance. "So, are we going to just stand outside all day or can we go inside?" The moment he said that Quicksilver was gone, the door opened and Lance and the others walked past Esau, heading inside also.

As he watched the group head inside, Esau followed after them, taking one last look over his shoulder at what laid out behind him. It was just a brief moment, but he paused, yet it passed quickly as he entered inside, the door closing behind him.

-X- Line Break -X-

Rubbing the back of his knuckles, Esau looked around the room, mainly upon the four teenagers a little ways away from him. He was dressed in his usual training gear, shorts and a compression top, they themselves wearing similar clothes, all standing in a wide-open area as they waited silently. Well, he was waiting silently, the other four were just chatting idly.

Though by the looks they were sending his way, he could more than likely be the topic of it.

It was then that the door opened and in stepped Raven, though she did not look like how he remembered. Her strict, but a beautiful caucasian frame with black hair looking like something straight out of a librarian fetish was now something distinctly, not human. An exotic, beautiful blue-skinned woman clad in a white dress with long red hair.

Esau was so focused on her frame that he missed her words to the others in the room, just watching as she walked. There was a certain poise to it, a deadly grace and Esau realised quite easily that she was not just an ordinary woman, nor just a simple recruiter.

This woman was a fighter and a good one, he didn't know how he knew that, just some instinct inside of him. Yet it didn't frighten him, no, just like with Logan who had looked even more dangerous just by lounging in a chair, Esau looked forward to seeing just how strong she could be.

"So this is how you really look?" He asked, Raven nodding her head. "Damn, I did not know I had a fetish like that, but not gonna lie, it's totally working for me."

His words though elected no typical response of annoyance, disgust or even fluster. They elected no response at all, Raven just coming to a stop in front of him. "From now on, you will refer to me not as Raven, but as Mystique. Just as you shall refer to your teammates by their own codenames unless in public. I want you to know them more by their codenames than their actual names."

"Is this is then?" Esau asked, looking towards the four guys beginning to stretch off. They didn't look like all that much, more like a bunch of teenagers chatting as they were forced to do exercise. "I thought you said you had a much larger organisation. How small is Xavier's X-Men then?"

"The Brotherhood is not centralised in one location but spread out globally. This is but just one charter of the Brotherhood, it just so happens to be the smallest, thanks in part, due to the presence of the X-Men." Mystique explained simply, Esau was quite curious and impressed by the true size of this operation.

He had not thought Mutants were this numerous.

"As for the X-Men, they have more members than us currently, but the true danger of the X-Men lies in not the students of Bayville, but the teachers at their base of operations. Those being the Mutants Wolverine, or Logan as you know him. As well as Charles Xavier and also, Storm. Those three are experienced Mutants and in the case of the latter two, incredibly powerful. Our job here as the Brotherhood is less to create a proper charter, but to instead act as a buffer against the X-Men, try and stop their expansion."

"While I'm assuming the rest of the Brotherhood continue to recruit more Mutants?" Mystique nodded her head. "Huh, I guess that's pretty impressive. So, what exactly is my role in this then? I don't exactly know what my powers are so I doubt I'll be of much help in the grand scheme of things."

"From what I'm aware of Xavier and his actions, he often finds Mutants when their powers have been newly activated. He came to you because your powers have already manifested and clearly, it is not something truly obvious, which makes things a little more difficult." Mystique said. "As for what you'll be doing, you'll be undergoing a sparring session with Blob, it's more than likely your powers are physical, possibly enhanced athleticism or something along those lines. Avalanche will be watching over it, ensuring things don't get out of hand."

"And what about you?"

"You've currently run away from home, Esau. It's my job to cover your tracks and one of the best ways to do that is to force your parents to sign an emancipation proclamation."

Esau frowned. "You won't have to force them, they'll be more than happy to sign it."