THE REAL WORLD

By Mike Rudden

This world made no sense to the girl known as Gaia.

The dimension where she lived for over a thousand years was a cold place, full of unfeeling monsters and manipulative titans. The planet on which she presently was fascinated her. The people devoted to religion, where nobility still ho a held a stake in something, and a proposition known as love. Gaia had none of these things in her home dimension, and found herself entrapped in them now.

Yes, it was true that Gaia was confused by several things. Not the least of them being her current status quo. She was standing at the gate of a place that every instinct told her was safe, yet her memory told her was evil. The gate of Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters. If she passed this gate, she would not be able to turn around again. The thought of just leaving Generation X and the New Hellions behind forever crossed her mind. But she had orders.

Gaia solemnly pressed the intercom button, activating a high-tech camera/monitor next to the gate. On the screen appeared a figure erased from her mind, that of Everett Thomas. Fatale said Gaia should get into the school without complication. But how could that be if Generation X was truly her enemy?

“Xavier’s School For… Gaia?! My God, Gaia?! Is that you?!” screamed the boy from inside the school. “J-Just stay there! I’ll come out.” The boy then jumped off the screen. Gaia just stood there, confused by the boy’s reaction. Is her sworn enemy… happy to see her?

“I… I’m home, Everett.”

The gate opened, and Gaia started towards the door. This was much easier than she expected. Before she could get halfway towards the main hall, the door flew open and the boy from on the monitor ran out. He took Gaia in his arms and kissed her. Gaia was shocked, but did not push away – it was all so confusing.

After the dust had settled, Gaia and Generation X were in the main hall. There were hugs; there were ‘We really missed you’ comments; there were ‘We’re sorry we didn’t look for you’ statements. Gaia met the two new students, one of which Fatale told her was her ally. But the dust had settled now, and Gaia could tell the other students wanted to leave.

“Well, Gaia, I’m sure you and Everett want to… be alone,” Emma spoke. “We’ll give you your privacy.”

Emma gestured at the other students, as well as Sean, to leave. After the last of them were out of the hall, Synch put his arm around Gaia’s shoulder.

“Why are you so quiet?” asked Everett.

“I’m just… tired,” said her stuttering voice. Ev noticed that her voice seemed like it aged twenty years… which was strange, considering her resistance to aging. “I should really get some rest.”

“Yeah, of course.” Synch stepped away from her. “I’ll be in my room when you wake up, ‘kay?”

“Okay.” Everett started to walk away, but Gaia stopped him. “Ev?”

“Yeah?”

She gave him a sweet kiss on the cheek. He just gave a contented smile, and continued out of the room. Gaia sighed, and pulled a cellular phone out of her pocket, and dialled the number she had committed to memory.

“Fatale… I’m in. Begin task invasion…” Gaia didn’t hear Sean Cassidy walk back into the room.

“Sorry to interrupt, lass, but we’re gonna have to run some tests on ye…”

He was interrupted by a white light in the middle of the room. The light turned into bandages, and then into the form of Murmur. Banshee gasped, while Gaia watched as Murmur teleported others in. Fatale, Bulwark, Vincente, Refrax, and Buff – The New Hellions.

“What in the bloody…?” Sean’s gaze switched to Gaia, “Ye bloody frigger!”

It was all so confusing, but he knew he needed back-up. And for that, he needed a telepathic intercom.

{Emma!} With his luck, Emma was being nosy and poking around in his mind.

{What, Sean?}

{Send a message to all students: Get to the main hall quick and be ready for a fight!}

{Okay… it’s done.}

{And tell Artie and Leech to stay in the attic, this could get messy!}

“Cassidy!” yelled Fatale, a smirk on her face. “We have given you an ultimatum! I am giving you one chance to tell us what we want to hear. Join us or perish!”

“Shove off!” Cassidy replied grimly, as he gave a weak sonic cry to keep the villains at far reach. Within minutes, the majority of the students appeared in the main hall dressed in their costumes. The Hellions seemed to be making some kind of wedge formation. Meanwhile, Emma was telepathically shooting out her own defensive maneuvers.

{Remember, everyone, the Hellions work best as a group. Our best chance is to divide them, and outnumber them, two to one.}

She received varied replies from her students, but all did as she wished. Her students and herself chose their opponents, and drove them out of the main hall. In the end, there were but two left. One of them was the girl known as Blink. The other was her new teacher, Banshee.

“Mister Cassidy… take off my restraints… I can fight!”

Banshee took a moment of concentrated thought, “I’m sorry, lassie, but nae. This is an important fight, and I cannae take any chances of another betrayal. I’m sorry…” Cassidy gave her a comforting hand on the shoulder, and then flew off to fight. Clarice just took a seat on the bottom of the stairs, in tears.

Monet St. Croix thought it was slightly ironic that she was at that place right then. It was the Danger Room, and she was fighting next to her newly-found boyfriend, Alex Roberts, a.k.a. Nuclear. This was the place where the two agreed to see each other as more than friends, and they were fighting for their lives against the monstrous Scandinavian boy known as Bulwark.

“Heim going to kill you!” yelled Bulwark.

Although Bulwark was formerly under the influence of Emplate, Monet could not tell if he was now under Fatale’s will… or if this is just blind rage. It was all so confusing.

“Not if I have anything to do with it, pretty boy!” cried M, as she flew towards Bulwark. She went in for a super-strong punch to the torso, but somehow missed. She was now being held by the waist by the monster himself.

“Ha! Ha! The little princess has geitten herself in a beit of a pickle, ‘ey?” chuckled Bulwark.

“G… get away from her!” yelled Nuclear. He started to power-up his hands with green, cascading energy. But, instead of releasing the energy, he let it fill up the rest of his body… until he looked not unlike Iceman. Both M and Bulwark watched in amazement. “I don’t like asking twice!”

With that, Alex flew into the air, making a green rift under him. He then unleashed a blast of radiant energy that would have blown the side of the Danger Room off… if it had not hit Bulwark.

Nuclear elegantly landed and collapsed to the ground. Monet walked over to him, being careful of what might happen next. She just watched as Alex stared at his solid green hand. So confusing, indeed.

The barn…

The only building on the campus which was not connected to the others, neither by communication lines nor electricity. It was used for little more than storage, and the occasional hide-out for a student.

But today, it housed a battle between Jonothon Starsmore, a.k.a. Chamber, and his mentor, Emma Frost, versus Refrax and Buff, two traitorous former students of the school.

“Take note, Jonothon…” commanded Emma, as she blasted an onslaught of psychic and telekinetic bolts at Refrax. “With practice, you’ll have this kind of control over your powers.” Refrax had little rebuttal with his eye-blasts.

{Well, I may not be fancy…} Chamber telepathically spoke to Emma, {…but what I lack, I make up in bravado!} From his chest, Starsmore shot a fiery telekinetic blast which knocked over Buff.

“Overpowering your opponents like that will get you nowhere, Jonothon. You burn up more of yourself than you do of your opponents.” sighed Emma.

“Not like… he could make himself look… any worse…” screeched Refrax as he stood to his feet. He took off his sunglasses, and blasted the shelf over Chamber, raining debris down on him.

“That was amusing,” whispered Frost, as she took control of the young couples’ minds, and gave them a weak brain freeze. “That should last a while.”

She glanced back at Jonothon, “You okay?

Chamber just telepathically muttered various obscenities in reply.

There was still a haze of what was happening over Sean Cassidy. It seemed more like a dream state than an actual reality. It seemed like he was watching himself… like what happened at the end of one’s life. It had yet to sink in that one or several of his students could die on this day. It was all very confusing.

Banshee did know that he was in his personal office, fighting the leader of the New Hellions, Fatale. He didn’t know much about Fatale that wasn’t in his computer files, but right now, that didn’t matter. Fatale unsheathed a blade from her forearm and slashed at Cassidy. He narrowly dodged the blade, and grabbed her arm in defense.

“Do ye have any contemplation of what ye’re doin’?!” Banshee snarled.

“Of course I do!” Fatale replied, as she broke Sean’s hold and doubled back to the other end of the office. “I’m making myself a legend! Myself and my team will become the people that Magneto and Apocalypse could only dream to be!”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’m making myself into a hero.”

“Are ye bloody mad?! Ye could never be a hero!”

“Heroes aren’t the ones who fight for good, they’re the ones who win!” Fatale jumped on the desk. “All stories in history represent this theory. American Revolution: colonists lose, they were called rebels who tried to selfishly overthrow the government. Civil War…”

“Well, then I suppose I’ll just have to win, eh?” Cassidy said, surprisingly calm. After a pause, he let go of a bellowing scream that shattered the desk and knocked Fatale unconscious.

Banshee stood over Fatale’s limp form, and looked around his office for some kind of restraints. She wanted to be a hero? Motives of the insane could be so confusing.

Beneath the chaos of Xavier’s campus, there was temporary silence. In the cellar called the War Room, two mutants liked to think they were forgotten. The two mutants known as Murmur and Vincente.

“S… so, you’re saying y-you can hack into the ‘puters and work the security system against them?” stuttered the walking mummy, Murmur.

“There hasn’t been a computer I haven’t been able to hack into!” claimed Vincente. He was keeping ahead of Murmur in a mist form, to not set off any laser security beams.

“B… but these a-aren’t exactly normal ‘puters…”

Vincente mumbled something, and continued on to the main computer system. He tried typing some random characters on the keyboard, but got nothing in return. He searched around the huge screen for some kind of secret switch. Nothing. What a confusing system…

“It’s voice activated, amigo,” came a voice from behind.

“Ah, curses.” Vincente turned around, and found a gray figure clothed in red, and a blonde girl right behind him. “Hallo…”

“Hola.” From about five feet away, Skin tried to punch Vincente, but Vincente instantly de-materialized into a transparent gas. “Where’d he go?”

“Ah don’t know, Angelo. Where’s the other…” Paige was cut off by flash a light behind her, which turned into the figure of Murmur. Murmur took her into a headlock.

“Paige!” yelled Angelo.

“I wouldn’t worry about her just yet,” came a voice from all over Skin’s face. The transparent gas started to turn purple, as it entered Angelo’s body. Within moments, Skin was out cold, and Vincente emerged from Skin’s mouth and re-materialized. “It’s not a glamorous job, I know…”

“Glamorize… this!” yelled Husk, who gave a swift elbow to Murmur. She then ran over to a high-tech, locked cabinet. “Student activate: P Guthrie. Open!”

The cabinet’s doors whirled open, revealing multiple restraint devices. She grabbed two, and quickly fashioned one around Murmur, who was still reeling from her last attack. Paige then glanced at Vincente, who was turning his body in a liquid state and rushing towards her. She quickly tore off a layer of skin, surprised to find that she had husked into a gaseous state of her own. Nitrous oxide. Vincente rushed through her new body, freezing his liquid state as he did.

Paige husked back to her normal body, and put a power dampener on Vincente. She then dragged both Vincente and Murmur into cells for them to wait for the chaos above to end.

The science laboratory…

Gaia didn’t know how she found herself there. It was certainly not her favorite class. Learning how the world went around never interested her. After all, was the Earth going to stop spinning whether you knew it spun counter-clockwise or not? It wasn’t that confusing.

But, motives aside, Gaia found herself there. She sat on a desk and watched the world outside the window. She loved it, but she never knew it. She felt that way about so many things nowadays.

“Gaia…?”

She turned around to find Everett standing in the doorway. “Why are you doing this?”

“Everett… you poor, naive, clueless thing,” Gaia started, as she got up off of her desk, “Did you honestly think everything would magically work out? That I, a mysterious, beautiful girl, would dramatically fall from another dimension into your handsome, all-American boy arms, to fulfill your every need, aspiration and desire? It doesn’t work that way…”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Well, how about this? I saw the light.” Gaia gave her best shot at an evil smile. “I am powerful, Everett. Far beyond what I’ve shown you, and far beyond what you think my potential is. And you, and your ‘mentors’, want me to stay cuddled up in some safety net of a school instead of using my powers to the fullest?!”

“What are you talking about? You came here of your own free will.”

“Lies! All lies! I came here when my powers had been extinguished! I was not as… perceptive as I am now. You, your classmates, your teachers tricked me! You, with your soothing ways. You made me think everything was going to be okay. Here’s a tip – nothing is ever okay!”

“I never thought…”

“That’s the problem, Everett. You never think to look past your own discriminative opinion to look at the bigger picture!”

“And what’s that, Gaia?” Everett said, with a ticked-off tone in his voice, “What’s the big picture?”

“My supreme power. You want an example? Fine!”

Gaia relaxed into deep concentration, “I am now in the mind of all of your classmates and teachers. They’ve all defeated their individual opponents. You’ve won.” Suddenly she grimaced, “They are all now unconscious. M, Nuclear, Skin, Husk, Chamber, Miss Frost, Mister Cassidy. None of them can help you now!”

“Are you mad?!” screamed Synch, clenching his fists.

“You want to see insanity? Shall I finish them off?!” Gaia turned around. “You can’t save them, Everett! You always try to be the hero, but you can’t do a thing now! Face it, Generation X has been defeated by their star student’s former girlfriend!”

“That’s it, Gaia! I can’t take this anymore!” Synch started to reach out with his own powers. “I love you, but…”

“But you’re a ravin’ psycho, is all!” yelled a voice, as a lithe red-clad figure jumped into the room, ‘paffing’ sparks at Gaia. Jubilee.

“Aw… Jubilee…” said Gaia, as she dodged Jubilee’s pyrotechnics and took Jubilee around the throat, using her as a shield against Everett. “You were always the one between Ev and I… how ironic!”

“Stay away from her, Gaia… this is between you and me!” yelled Synch.

“C’mon, Ev! We’re never gonna really between together until I finish her off! She’s always been the third wheel!” A beam of psychic energy erupted from Gaia’s hand, and geared towards Jubilee’s forehead.

“Step away, Gaia!”

“Never!”

With that Synch reached out with his own powers, synching with Gaia. In a split-second, he used Gaia’s telekinetic powers to reach into her body, and gently squeeze her heart. Gaia collapsed to the ground. No blood. No screams.

Everett fell to his knees and wept.

Jubilee tried to comfort him, but to no avail.

In the main hall, there sat one forgotten character in this battle. She wondered which side was winning. She could never imagine the onslaught which lies all around her.

“Cl… Clarice?” Fatale entered the room, clinging to the wall for support.

“Fatale!” Blink stood, “What happened to the others?”

“When I came to, all members of Generation X were unconscious. I’ve gathered all the Hellions outside. We’re ready to leave.”

“I… I’m not going with you…”

“Why not?”

“I… like it here.”

“Then will you not be letting us leave?”

Clarice thought. There were so many options. “I want to make a name for myself as a hero. I cannot get the feeling of guilt out of myself… so go. My debt is fulfilled.”

“I respect your decision, but I can’t say I understand it. We’ll meet again someday…”

With that, Fatale left. Clarice fell to the stairs once more. She listened as Fatale and Murmur started to teleport the team away.

What would she tell Mister Cassidy and Miss Frost? What would they think with her, the only one conscious, as the Hellions got away?

This world could be so confusing.

NEXT ISSUE: The battle may be over, but the repercussions have yet to come! Synch’s actions take a toll not only on him, but on Jubilee as well! While Emma contemplates Nuke’s metamorphosis, his condition takes a turn for the worse! All this, and a love triangle gone bad!