Invitation to a better life

Everytime Robert was mentioned by Vali, it made the group of mutants uneasy after all Vai didn't exactly look like the friendly type nor did he give off that kind of vibe.

If anything, Vali was unpredictable. He was the type that could really be anyone he wants, a good or bad person didn't exist in his mind only people he liked or didn't like.

Short story short, he's a person driven by personal gain, same mentally as most people in the world only taken to the extreme since he had the power to do so.

These types of people were the hardest yet also the easiest to deal with, as long as you can satisfy them then they're your, "friends" and if you can't then you don't know what they will do to get what they want.

Every mutant in the room to some degree respect and are indebted to Robert so they would protect him to the best of their abilities and some of the mutants here weren't anything to scoff at, especially the hooded man.

"Again, what do you want with Robert? If you want Ross then we can give him to you but if you try anything against Robert, we'll stop you!" The hooded man darkly said.

"I don't care about Ross, you guys can kill him for all I care but can you guys stop being so defensive? We're here to help you not harm you." Vali helplessly replied.

Charles also chimed in at the moment and said passionately, "yes! We're here to help you. Like I said before, I run a school for mutants and want to invite you guys to join us. Us mutants should stick together, we're stronger this way so we can protect our own.

"School?" The hooded man was confused and looked to his comrades.

"Before you came up here the old man was talking about his school exclusively for mutants. He said they would protect us and teach us how to control our powers!" One of the mutants in the group excitedly informed the hooded man.

They were all rather excited that there were a lot more mutants out there like them and were quite tempted to join the school. They didn't want to run any more, they wanted to settle down and know that they were safe.

It was tiring mentally and physically for all of them to be constantly on guard against the world so when they heard about the school, they thought about it as a safe haven from those like Ross.

Although they all wanted to join they didn't make any hasty decision and instead looked to their de facto leader, the hooded man since he was the second strongest in the group after Robert.

Even the hooded man was actually quite tempted. Thinking of his past and the suffering he had to go though to get to where he was today, he really wanted to just settle down and be done with being scared of not waking up to see the next light of day.

"You'll take in all of us?" The hooded man asked with hope. There were quite a few of them, 13 of them to be exact and that was including those who weren't currently here at the moment.

Charles smiled and nodded, "as long as you're willing then we'll accept all of you, we wouldn't turn away any mutant seeking asylum, weak or strong as long as they want protection."

"This seems too good to be true... there's something more to this, isn't there?" It was quite suspicious the way Charles was promoting his school and the hooded man knew enough about society to know there's no such thing as a free lunch in this world.

Yes everything people do is driven by benefits and Charles also knew this and its true that he would get something out of this, "yes, you're right. In return for taking you guys in, you also need to contribute to the school weather that be providing protection or teaching the young ones."

Charles went on and on about the benefits and costs of taking the group of mutants in and it honestly wasn't too bad of conditions for them at all and it made perfect sense for them to contribute to the functioning of the school as it would become their home for years to come.

After Charles entire speech, the hooded man and his group were even more tempted, this was their future livelihood at stake after all. However the hooded man didn't minke a decision right away and instead looked at his group.

He saw all their hopes and desires raging like a fire from their eyes and he felt that he was carrying all of it. He held the burden of being a leader and being the final decision maker on weather they would leave with Charles or not.

The whole room was silent, they were all waiting for the hooded man to make his decision. After a lot of deliberation the hooded man finally made his decision and said, "follow me!"

His words were mostly directed at Vali and almost everyone could tell that the hooded man was going to show them to Robert who was in critical condition downstairs in the basement.

Everyone followed the hooded man downstairs without saying anything but Vali suddenly realized something that he forgot to ask, "I just realized, I forgot to ask for your names, also my names Vali by the way, Vali Ferguson."

After Vali's introduction, everyone also realized they never introduced themselves. One by one everyone started introducing themselves as they made their way downstairs until there was only one person yet to introduce himself.

"Kyle, that's all I go by!" The hooded man simply introduced himself.

"Kyle, I assume your mutant power has something to do with teleportation or space manipulation right?" Vali asked. He was already quite interested in Kyle for a while now, not in Kyle himself but rather the power he held.

It was surprising for Kyle and his group when Vali figured out Kyles mutant ability. Kyle frowned and replied, "it's space manipulation... how did you know?"

Vali smiled, "quite simply actually. You knew what my knight looked like and you knew it died meaning you were there at the moment Robert killed my knight. There's no way you could've gotten away safely without some kind of teleportation power."

Kyle just nodded, Vali's explanation made sense and he also admired Vali's deduction abilities. With so little information and clues about him to go off of, Vali was able to find out an important piece of information about him.

When they entered the basement, everyone felt the temperature drop by a significant margin, to the point where they could see their own breath every time they exhaled.

The x-men squad didn't expect the sudden drop in temperature and some didn't take to well, mainly Scott who commented, "it's really cold down here."

"It's Robert. After we escaped from the facility things turned for the worst. Rosses experiments did something to our powers and now some of us are starting to show negative side effects." Kyle explained.

He then rolled up his sleeves and showed his bare arms to the group. Most of his forearms looked transparent, you could see completely though them almost as if they weren't there.

"I got lucky, it was only my arms. I can still feel them but at the same time I cant." Kyle said as moved one of his hands to swipe through his missing arms, "my hands are still connected to my arm... I just don't know where my arms are, I lost them."

Kyle looked embarrassed as he explained his condition. He felt awkward because he sounded like an idiot who misplaced something nobody else in their right minds could lose.

After Kyle, a couple of other mutants who had some pretty bad side effects also started showing their side effects. There were some pretty bad ones like one of them who had his back permanently turned into wood or the woman who's power blinded her.

Scott felt the most empathy for the woman since her power was a lot like his and he realized that if his powers turned on him he would end up a lot like the woman who could emit a bright light from her eyes only his eyes would be disintegrated into nothing.

On the other hand, Charles, Logan, and Jean felt intense hatred towards Ross. Charles because this was one of his kind that was suffering and for the longest time he's been trying to get humans and mutants to coexist.

Logan felt even more hatred, he already knew how mutant experimentation worked as he was also a victim to it, granted he was the one who gave the ok but now that he saw how bad it could've turned out for him he felt angry at himself for allowing himself to be experimented on.

Lastly, Jean was just an empathetic person by nature so she could almost feel exactly what the victims felt and the way Ross treated mutants completely disgusted her so much she felt like her powers were about to go berserk again.

"So you're saying that Robert is having a really bad reaction to the experimentations done by Ross?" Vali asked.

He didn't have an intense reaction towards any of this as he already knew what Ross was like and expected this outcome a long time ago but he still cursed Ross silently in his mind.

Kyle nodded and replied, "his powers are killing him slowly and it should also be extremely violent but Robert still has some control over it and is keeping it concentrated on himself so that he doesn't hurt us..."

He continued, "I can tell he's starting to lose more and more control over his power. At first he was able to keep it around 1 meter of himself but as time went on the concentration of his powers has been continuously expanding now it's at about 5 meters"

Kyle pointed at Robert who was lying on an ice block shivering from the cold. The x-men saw the condition Robert was in and their expressions darkened, he looked like a human popsicle.

"Lilly! Sam! Come and meet our guests!" Kyle called over the two kids watching Robert from a distance.

"Kyle! Robert won't last much longer, we need to save him!" Lilly cried out helplessly but she knew that the situation was hopeless.