25 January 2008.
Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters sat behind gates that pretended to be modest. Westchester air, manicured lawns, a long drive that suggested old money and new secrecy. The mansion itself belonged in a brochure for donors who wanted to feel righteous without ever sharing a street with the people they claimed to support.
Lucius had seen the films and comics. He knew what this morally compromised, manipulative, and naïve person did. He remembered the speeches and the piano music, the calm professor presenting himself as the face of dignity, as if dignity could protect children from cages. Mutants were hunted, registered, and collaring technology existed for a reason, and most of the gifted lived like rats. They hid, they ran, they lied about their names, and they prayed no one looked too closely.
Xavier sat in the centre of that and smiled. A saint, the stories said. A beacon and a bridge. Lucius scoffed at the blinded ideology. A traitor dressed in velvet and praised for it. He was the killer of Rachel Grey. His philosophy was sick.
He did not need a lecture on coexistence. Coexistence was what humans called it when they wanted mutants to live quietly in corners and die politely when ordered. If this was the professor's dream, then the world had granted it with brutal enthusiasm.
The gate was in front of him. Cold iron, security lights, and cameras were placed where they could watch the road without looking too obvious. He teleported inside.
He materialised on the mansion's front steps. He held his breath for a moment, then relaxed when no alarm screamed, and no psychic slap cracked across his skull.
He kept to teleportation only. Invisibility was useful, but he refused to rely on a single tool when the stakes involved telepaths and teachers with too much time.
He moved room by room like an inspector. Small jumps and short pauses. Eyes on the faces of the sleeping mutants.
He moved and landed inside what appeared to be a laundry room. Two baskets overflowed with uniforms and tracksuit tops. He lifted one shirt with the tip of his finger, checked the size, and dropped it back.
"Saving the oppressed one wash cycle at a time," he whispered.
He avoided the dormitory rooms of the girls with deliberate care. He did not need to see sleeping teenagers, and he did not need an excuse for why he had. The professor's school might play at innocence, but it was still a target-rich environment for predators, and Lucius refused to be lumped in with that class of filth. At least the school was not on an island.
Instead, he hunted for his objective.
Julian Keller, aka Hellion. Telekinesis with precision and violence, the kind that could punch through a wall or hold a heart still. Lucius remembered him from the comics and the fan arguments, remembered the broad strokes. Arrogant, double check. Talented, check. Dangerous, oh boy... A kid who had been broken and smoothed into something manageable.
Both Professor X and Emma Frost had done work on him. Not out of the kindness of their hearts. They were both child soldier groomers after all.
Somehow, instead of using their telepathy to fix the emotionally unstable boy, they choose to put dampeners in his mind. Not on the wrists for obvious reasons.
Lucius passed a doorway and caught a glimpse of a classroom. Rows of desks, a chalkboard covered in neat equations, and in the corner, a glass cabinet holding devices, collars that looked too clinical to be harmless.
He moved again and appeared at the end of a hallway where the air felt colder. The building's silence deepened here, as if the walls had agreed to keep secrets.
A door stood slightly ajar.
Lucius stepped closer, then teleported inside.
Hellion lay on a bed, breathing slowly. The room was plain by mansion standards. A stack of books sat on a chair. A pair of trainers kicked under the bed. The only indulgence was a battered stereo on a shelf.
Lucius studied him for a moment.
He was not a child. Old enough to be dangerous, young enough to still believe someone else might save him. That belief would not survive tonight.
He took out the Somnus Draught.
The vial sat cold between his fingers. He brought it close to Hellion's face and uncorked it with care. A thin shimmer rose from the mouth, mist that caught the faint light coming from the large window and made it look almost pretty.
Lucius held his breath. He was not interested in being the punchline to his own plan.
He moved the vial close enough that Hellion inhaled once, then again and again. The chest rose and fell, slow at first, then slower. Lucius watched the eyelids flutter, watched the body slacken further.
He sealed the vial and slid it back into his inventory.
"Sweet dreams," he murmured, and his tone held no warmth.
He gripped Hellion by the shoulder and teleported.
The mansion vanished, and the warehouse returned.
Hellion dropped to the dirty floor with a dull thud. Dust lifted from the concrete and settled on his hair. He did not stir.
Lucius did not waste time admiring the convenience.
He took chalk out and began drawing the sacrificial array around the sleeping body. The lines went down clean. The symbols formed with the ease of practise, the kind that made a man forget he was doing something monstrous.
He stepped onto the first rune and grinned.
"Sacrifice," he said, and the intention behind the word was hungry. He wanted all the abilities of Hellion.
He felt the pull, the same wrongness in the air as before, but lighter this time, as if the entity had been waiting for a meal.
Hellion's eyes snapped open.
Lucius did not move.
Hellion's gaze locked onto him, confusion shifting into sudden fear, then into rage too late to matter. His fingers twitched, and nothing happened.
The dampeners in his mind had done their job. The array did the rest.
His body began to disintegrate as reality lost interest. Pixel by pixel, layer by layer.
Lucius pulled Bob out as the last of Hellion vanished.
Ink formed on the page.
Racial Skills
- Rapid Healing
- Mental Shields
- Teleportation
- Telekinesis
- Flight
- Force Field Generation
- Energy Blasts
- Molecular Manipulation
Lucius stared, then laughed.
The smile on his face was wicked and manic, the kind of smile that belonged on a wanted poster.
Veil of Fate remained his only reason for breathing. Without it, the bleeding hearts and the self-appointed saints would already be descending, weeping for the boy he had just turned into an entry on a page.
--
Far away, something watched with childish interest.
A Beyonder tilted its head, amused. It had waited a millennium for entertainment and found a human who treated morality like a menu.
With a thought, the Beyonder nudged probability. Not enough to change the board, only enough to keep the pieces interesting.
It wanted to see what a man from Earth 1218 did when handed power in a world he had once called fiction.
-
Back in the warehouse, Lucius tucked Bob away and stretched his fingers.
"Hard work," he muttered with a straight face. "Honest labour."
He turned to the chair he had used last time, the one that had survived the Vanisher and DiPizzazetti business with only a few stains.
He reached with his mind.
The sensation was strange at first. Not a single grasp, but a spread, like reaching into water and trying to pinch a pebble without seeing it. He felt the chair, then touched it with a telekinetic grip.
The chair shattered, wood snapped and metal bent. The whole thing collapsed into splinters as if he had punched it with a sledgehammer.
Lucius stared at the ruins.
"Right," he said softly. "I am control, I am calmness, oh, and I am subtle."
The next problem announced itself immediately.
His telekinetic output was visible. Faint green, pulsing, like translucent feelers moving through the air. Useful for training, terrible for discretion. He preferred his violence to be deniable.
He tried to layer invisibility over the telekinetic field.
The first attempt produced a light show that would have pleased a nightclub. The second attempt produced an even worse one. The third attempt produced nothing at all, which meant it probably worked.
He tested it on a loose plank.
The plank lifted without any visible green shimmer, then shattered.
Lucius nodded once. This was what progress and hard work looked like.
Then came control.
He took out a large banana from his inventory. The fruit landed in his palm. He tried to hold it with telekinesis. The banana burst. He tried again, but the banana burst again. He exhaled and focused...
After some time, he managed to hold one long enough to feel hopeful, then crushed it by accident when his concentration shifted.
By the time he managed a stable grip, the warehouse floor looked like a fruit massacre.
He stared at the pile.
"That is at least sixty doses of LSP," he muttered. "My losses are accumulating."
He practised output in small adjustments, tightening and loosening the pressure until he could lift a banana without turning it into paste. He then peeled one. The peel came off in ragged strips, but the banana remained intact.
He nodded as if that was an achievement worthy of a certificate.
Next, he tried sweeping the floor with telekinesis.
He shaved three inches off the concrete. Lucius stared at the fresh gouge.
"Excellent," he said. "I have invented renovation." The practice continued.
Flight came next.
He used a banana again, because he had already sacrificed the dignity of the exercise.
He wrapped the banana in a telekinetic field and lifted it. It hovered obediently.
He pushed it forward slowly. The banana moved.
He pushed it faster.
Friction reminded him that reality was not obliged to humour him. The banana smoked, browned, and then exploded into mush against a wall.
Lucius exhaled through his nose.
"Physics 101," he muttered, as if the concept had personally insulted him.
Force fields were easier.
He formed a banana-shaped force field around the next banana, held it inside like a protective bubble, and began moving it at speed. The field took the impact instead of the fruit, and the banana became a yellow projectile ricocheting through the warehouse.
A banana-shaped meteor.
It punched holes in rotten boards, dented sheet metal, and nearly turned a support beam into kindling.
Lucius laughed.
After hours of practice, he dared to apply it to himself.
He formed a force field around his body. The field matched his shape closely and pulsed with the same faint green light. He lifted off the floor by a few inches and held still, concentrating on not drifting into a wall like a drunk balloon.
He moved up, down, left and right. He combined it all until he could glide across the warehouse with slow, deliberate control.
-
Outside, someone saw it.
A man walking his dog stopped, stared at the holes appearing in the warehouse wall, and then at the pulsing green shape hovering around.
He fumbled for his phone and called 911.
"Nine one one, what is your emergency?"
"Yeah," the caller blurted, words tumbling. "There is a flying alien banana."
The operator closed her eyes for a brief moment.
Of course, there was.
"And where is this… banana, sir?"
"In the abandoned warehouse by the river," he insisted. "It is pulsing green, and it is going in and out of the walls. It turned the whole place into Swiss cheese. Like in Tom and Jerry."
The operator kept her tone calm because calm was policy and also because laughter was not.
"Sir, have you taken any substances tonight?"
"Woman, it is not about my crack," he snapped, offended by the accusation. "I am sober enough to know what I am seeing. There is a fricking alien banana opening holes in a warehouse."
"Are you in any danger, sir?"
"The banana is in danger," he said, voice breaking with outrage. "It's glowing green."
Inside the warehouse, Lucius drifted sideways and clipped a wall. The force field absorbed the impact, but the wall did not appreciate it.
The caller yelped into the phone.
"It hit the wall again. The banana hit the wall again."
The operator dispatched police and an ambulance anyway. Not because she believed him, but because the alternative was ignoring a call that might become a lawsuit.
"Sir," she said, "help is on the way. Please stay at a safe distance."
"I am at a safe distance," he replied, voice trembling. "I am behind a truck."
The operator resisted the urge to ask whether the dog had also seen the banana.
"Stay on the line," she said.
Lucius hovered a few inches higher, pleased with his progress.
He had power.
He had control.
And somewhere outside, an emergency operator was about to write the words flying alien banana into an official report.
This universe was generous.