X-Men: Extraordinary Times

Have you ever felt like you could fix or change something that you didn't like, if only you had the chance? That you could make something better, whether it was something for yourself, someone you cared about, or just people at-large?

See, I always thought that if I worked hard enough and learned enough, I could help make some kind of difference. God knows I had the support.

Sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

My name is Bellamy Marcher, humble high school sophomore, or at least I was when this all started.

I was never what one would necessarily call a go-getter. Sure, I could get things done, but I was of the philosophy that if I didn't have to do something, or even move for that matter, I wouldn't. Does that count as being lazy?

Anyway, needless to say, I wasn't a morning person. Until one day, all of a sudden, I was.

It was odd.

I remember. I woke up that morning feeling good. Great even.

At the crack of dawn, the moment enough sunlight peeked through my room, I was up and couldn't get back to sleep, even though I still had two hours before I had to get to school.

It was strange, and annoying. I liked sleep, and I was definitely not a morning person. Either way, my body had deigned that I would not be gettting anymore sleep that day and forced me up to prepare to head out to school.

I didn't even need much time to warm up and adjust to being awake. By the time my feet hit the floor, I was ready to go, and I only felt more energetic as the day went on.

The moment I left my house and closed the door behind I felt a rush of energy jolt through me. I felt wired, like I was on gallons of caffeine, and all I'd done was step into the daylight. That feeling didn't necessarily go away either, even though I'd had gym class as my first of the day. We ran the mile that day, and I'd burned through it in myfastest time to date.

My legs pumped harder and faster, easier than they ever had. I even lapped most of the other kids, then went inside and played basketball for another 45 minutes, and still nothing.

That was just the beginning.

I was still full of energy, even near the end of the day. More than ever before. I could hardly sit still, and it only got worse as time went on.

By my last class, I had to take to drumming my fingers on the table and tapping my toes to occupy myself without going crazy, focusing on the rhythm to give myself some peace of mind. The final bell was the most merciful sound I'd ever heard in his life.

I didn't run out of the classroom so much as I cut a mad dash to the outdoors. I ran down the sidewalk on the route I normally took home. It felt good, even when I was forced to go uphill.

There was definitely something wrong. My heart should have been pounding in the back of my throat because of how fast I'd been running and for how long. But I just felt the need to keep going for as long as I could, which felt like it would be a while.

Or at least it would have been, had I not been stupid enough to run out in the street and nearly get clipped by a city bus.

I dodged it, but I fell down in the middle of the road, right in the way of an incoming cable car. Aren't I just so coordinated?

I was moments away from being a story on the evening news for getting killed by public transportation. Ironically, the way I saved myself probably ended up as a story on the evening news as well.

I put my hands up in some useless attempt to fend off the gigantic metal contraption rolling at me, and it actually worked.

A blast of some kind of light flew out of my hands and blew the cable car off of its rigging, knocking the whole thing over onto its side. It fell on a car, caused other accidents all over the road. It was just a big mess all around.

All I could do was sit there, wondering if it had really been me who had done such a thing. I was scared to death. People didn't shoot blasts of…whatever the hell that was, out of their hands. At least, most of them didn't.

"What was that?"

"It was that kid! I saw him!"

"He blew up the cable car!"

First of all, I didn't blow up anything. I knocked it over. There was a difference. As I noticed more people pointing, staring, and speculating, I did the only thing that made sense. I got up and took off running again.

I was scared. Scared of what I had just done and scared of how people would react.

It was easy to be afraid. For them and for me. I was a mutant.

People suck. I wasn't fully aware of this just yet, or I wasn't aware to what degree they could suck. Not all people, mind you. But enough of them to where letting too many of them know that you were a mutant was a problem.

Yes, I was aware of the whole Genosha thing (it was much more than a 'thing', don't think I'm being insensitive or downplaying it at all). I didn't watch much news, but I wasn't totally ignorant. People weren't exactly enamored with the idea of superpowered plebs with little to no control over dangerous abilities running around. Hell, the power didn't even have to be dangerous. They could just look different. A lot of people simply didn't like the fact that there were others born that much different than they were living among them.

My powers were definitely dangerous though.