A young boy in one of the most important families of the mutant story is trapped in our present, and his future.
The weight of his family legacy weighs down on every part of him as a consequence. How do you fix a tragedy that had already finished? What happens when your surname inspires fear, despair, and revulsion in the people around you?
His family is broken in ways beyond measure. He has to find them before he can even mend the cracks.
I've been always wanting to explore this little part of the Marvel canon, which I felt had been underutilized entirely. I'd also had written this first storyline five times, in drastically different ways. They're an unexplored family, more famous for their legacy than their tragedy.
I wanted to do an SI, but I feel like I'd make a mess of too much meta-rumination than anything else. I'll leave that nonsense for Gwenpool and people better at writing SI's without making that kind of mistake.
If anyone had to ask me what I was like as a child, I would have said I was a fanatically zealous member of 'team dinosaur' until the day I died. Or at least, that is what I would have said roughly an hour ago. Right now, I was very concerned that the other members on 'team dinosaur' might be the reason why I died. I didn't want to be eaten alive in a literal prehistoric jungle, but that was becoming very, scarily likely. I called out to my sister for help.
"Tanya, help me!"
Tanya, who was my blessed older sister in question, had just gotten us both into this horrible prehistoric nightmare. It wasn't her fault, not at all, but this was still a mess that only she could have gotten us into.
After all, her and my younger brother were... troubled. Troubled in ways that kept my dad up all night with worry. Which made him stress. He'd called a cousin of his for help, but Howard hadn't bothered to answer. Too busy with his government contracts. He'd considered talking to a person wo was putting out an newspaper add, but he changed his mind. He was a man of science, not weird 'children of the atom' conspiracy theories, he ranted.
Tanya couldn't help wat was happening to her. She'd been vanishing before our very eyes and just as easily reappearing over and over again for the last few months, with no control over it. With her time at home lasting less and less long each time she returned, and her time away from us taking longer and longer, it was inevitable she'd one day never return to us.
And now she took me on one of these trips on accident. And it made me even more worried.
God, this is what she'd been doing the whole time?
Dad was going to be so worried. He was already working on something to help with Larry's migraines. We'd need to give her something. This was dangerous.
The older than me teenager I was worried about was perched on top of a thick branch of the tree she'd clambered up to escape the dinosaurs trying to eat us, trying her hardest to pull on the thick vine I was clinging onto, in an attempt to get me to safety with her.
"Hurry up and climb, Chris!"
"I'm not good at school rope climb, Tanya! What makes you think I can climb this!?"
I was trying. It didn't help that the vine was slick and wet too, and I was very sure that it had frog eggs clinging on it or something gross like that. My hands grabbed a wet, loose patch of the vine when I reached up, and I shot down a few feet towards the ground, making me scream in panic with my voice cracking in the way a kid just going through the start of puberty did.
I mean, I was going through puberty. Needing to bathe more often sucked. I was going to need a long shower if I got back home because being chased by hungry dinosaurs in a giant rainforest made you feel very sweaty and sticky.
In related news, I was no longer a part of 'team dinosaur' anymore. When I got back, I was going to throw all of the remnant models I had into the trash, and join our dad on 'team robot' from now on. Small ones, big ones, I don't care. Even those giant cartoon ones Larry used to watch. Giant robots won't try to kill me.
Taking a few short, shaky breaths to hype myself up, I resumed climbing. Soon enough, a sound drew my attention down, which was a mistake for my sanity.
Because that was a lot of hungry raptor teeth and claws below me.
I didn't know they were feathered, my mind wandered. I'm being hunted by cavemen chickens.
Tanya made some progress on pulling the vine I clung onto higher, and I restarted my climb upwards, praying that I didn't fall or slip. But just as I was making headway to safety, I saw movement and heard noise.
The dinosaurs were climbing the trunk to get to us.
I yelled and kicked at the one that made up the highest. "Get away from me, you-you fossil!"
My foot connected with the predatory animal's head, and the hit sent it off the tree and into the jungle below. Sadly, the movement of me swinging my leg out jostled my centre of gravity, and I slid down another few feet once again. If what wasn't bad enough, Tanya's grip faltered a little as well, and by the time I got a secure grip back and Tanya stopped the vine from falling further, I was even lower than when I started.
As if to illustrate the danger I was in, one of the raptors jumped up, coming short of my foot by only a few feet.
"I'll never hog the TV again if you pull me up!"
"I'm trying, Chris!"
I made some progress, which was good because the raptors were climbing each other by now, and I only was just keeping out of reach of the gnashing and hissing teeth below.
Another one of the ones climbing the trunk to get up to Tanya saw me and instead of going for her, jumped off the trunk below me, and bit onto the same vine I was on. Thankfully, it landed just below me instead of on me, and it couldn't climb the vine, just jerk and shake the thick, soggy plant matter. I stomped on its' snout and used that as a solid foothold to gain some height.
"They're gonna eat me if you don't pull me up, sis!"
"For the third time, I'm trying, you moron!" Tanya yelled back, just as panicked as I was over the whole 'dinosaurs are trying to have us for dinner' problem. "Quit whining already!"
My older sister pulled even harder on the vine, heaving as she tried to lift my weight up. We got there, but so did the first of the raptors on the trunk.
"Behind you!"
Tanya whirled around and hit a raptor diving for her with a wild haymaker that sent it flying away squawking and hissing as it fell below.
Meanwhile I was trying to heave up the last parts of the slick mossy vine that the raptor below shook like a dog with a chewtoy. Just a few inches more...
A tearing noise just above me where the vine connected to the branch resounded through the jungle, and the vines started to slowly give up from both the weight of my body and the dinosaur hanging onto it blow me. Tanya turned, and then gasped aloud as her body began glowing again.
Fear gripped me entirely. If she disappeared, I'd be stuck here in the past.
"Tanya!"
"Chris!"
My sister had come to the exact same realization as quickly as I did, and instead of continuing to try and pull me up to the branch she was on, she immediately dove off of it and plummeted towards me instead, extending her hands out towards me.
"Grab on!"
I reached out towards her as the vine finally gave way, and just as I did, I saw a raptor pounce off of the branch, after us both. It's jaws were about to snap closed onto Tanya, but time seemed to slow just for a second as our fingers barely brushed together and we were sent hurtling through time once more, instead of plummeting to our deaths in the far, far ancient past.
Tanya landed on top of me as we both collapsed onto an empty road, with ditches at either side.
"Ouch," she groaned.
"You're crushing me," I whined back at her.
She scrambled to her feet, and helped pick me up with an offered arm. After that, we both spent a few seconds quickly pulling off wet rainforest vines and plants from our clothes.
Halfway through, Tanya started laughing. I couldn't help it; I laughed too.
Stress bled away as we laughed in relief, and my sister then put me in a hug that lifted me off of my feet and spun me around.
Then Tanya stopped laughing entirely.
"Oh my god, Chris, I'm sorry," my sister hugged me. "I didn't mean- I didn't want- I didn't know that I could take people with me! If I did, I-"
"Shut up," I interrupted her, still running on fumes. "We lived! Okay, we're okay!"
Just a little slimy.
"Yeah," Tanya said, still not letting me go. "We're okay. Nobody got hurt."
I wrestled my way out of my uncomfortably huggy sister's crushing arms.
"Thank god that's over at least," I jinxed.
A quiet hissing roar answered me back, and we shot our heads towards the origin of the noise. One of the raptors from wherever in the past we'd been, probably the one that was dangling off the vine below me not too long ago, had come with us through time.
Tanya and I both slowly backed away one step in unison, hands raised.
"Um, good lizard?"
It snarled at Tanya and stepped forwards slowly.
We took another step back as it made a gesture like it was going to pounce, but thankfully before it did, a massive purple floodlight turned on and bathed all three of us in a bright light, which sent the dinosaur fleeing away into the dark in fright.
"Animal control is going to hate that call," I mused, still a little giddy, a little drunk on adrenaline.
Tanya was as still as death.
I paused at that. She wasn't this scared when it was raptors. What could-
"No," she whispered quietly.
"T-Tanya?"
She turned to look me in the eyes, and she was utterly haunted.
I slowly craned my body around behind me to see what made the purple floodlights, making a visor with my hands and squinting to see that of all things, there was a giant humanoid robot standing on the road. How didn't we notice that? I guess the dark and being relieved distracted us.
Actually, the more I stared at it, the better I say it. That robot looked more and more familiar, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
"Wait. Doesn't that look a bit like-"
"MUTANT GENOMES IDENTIFIED. CAPTURING."
Tanya suddenly tackled me out of the purple light and into the ditch at the side of the road.
I would have yelled at her, but when I opened my mouth I heard a loud noise from the robot and watched in shock as the giant robot raised an arm and blasted exactly where we were standing moments ago with a giant red laser beam, leaving a massive glowing red sphere occupying a quarter of the road.
Then the robot's large, purple head turned to follow us, the pinprick brightness from the glowing eyes slowly intensifying as it did so.
"Christopher, run!"
Tanya grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet, and for a second time today we were running for our lives.
I was no longer on 'team giant robot'.
"TWO OMEGA CLASS MUTANT THREATS FLEEING. FOLLOWING AND REQUESTING REINFORCEMENTS."
I looked back for only a second to see that it was now in flying from thrusters under both of its feet; the light from them illuminating the ground below.
"Tanya, it's flying after us!"
"They do that! Keep running!"
"They!?"
"Just run, Chris! Over there!"
Tanya pointed at a break in the treeline ahead, where we could get off the road and under cover.
We narrowly avoided getting hit with another blast from the robot that was chasing us when we juked hard to the side and made a break for woods, scrambling desperately through the dark floor of the forest at night while several hundred pounds of hostile metal with a face that was more and more familiar to me when I kept thinking about it flew over the trees behind and above us. Tanya grabbed onto me and pushed me against a trunk, and the purple light from the thing barely missed us as we were in the shadows.
"Stay quiet," she whispered as quietly as she could, crouching down and leaning past the trunk to get a look at the machine while it hovered in the air above us both, slowly scanning the forest for us. After a few moments, she pointed in a different direction. "We'll go this way and avoid the Sentinel."
I nodded assent. We crept to where the machine had already looked for us, letting the robot assume we ran straight ahead and hoping it didn't include double backing as part of its searching techniques. Then, when it seemed to be going away in one direction, we went diagonally away in a different one, still in the trees.
After a few agonizing minutes of moving slowly in the dark, with Tanya holding close enough to grab me if she started to move through time again, we started to hear roaring thrusters in the sky. We looked up, and to our dismay, even more of the damn killer robots had shown up, and they were searching from up above, too. Don't they have anything better to do?
"What the hell are those things?" I asked with quiet panic in my voice. "You called it a Sentinel! Why do they-"
"I d-," Tanya stopped herself."Bad things happen in the future, okay? And don't curse."
I didn't care about cursing. I cared about this. This was insane. "What do you mean by bad things happening in the future!? Can't we change it?"
"No, if I changed the past, the future would get worse. This future would get worse than how it is."
"Worse!? What's worse than robots hunting us and calling us mutants? You want to clam up about things now, when you've kept telling me about the adventures you were on every time you came back? When you kept telling Larry? Tanya, what are they!?"
Tanya looked like she'd swallowed a lemon. But she still took a breath, and calmly grabbed my hand.
"I can't say!"
"Why not!?" I yelled back.
A thumping noise and purple light bathing us both made it near instantly clear I'd made a massive, fatal mistake.
"MUTANT GENOMES IDENTIFIED. CAPTURING."
The booming robotic announcement rung out in the silence. We looked up as purple light illuminated us, and we saw it land in the largest space it could find, right next to us both. It crouched over and then reached out from above with a massive arm. It loomed. It felt like my life was flashing before my eyes with how it slowly grew larger as it approached. But before it could grab me, or Tanya, or both of us at once, a thin and bright red beam of light waved through and cut the neck of the Sentinel as Tanya had called it, making the head fall off and the robot fall down.
"Holy crap," I gaped.
Tanya gave me a 'don't curse' glance, but thought better of it.
Another Sentinel exploded in the distance, and the fireball ignited some trees, the fire giving a faint light glow to the dark forest in the distance.
Then another one broke apart.
"X-MEN ATTACKING. ELIMIN-"
"Oh," Tanya sighed, a little bit more relaxed. "They're here."
I was about to ask who they were, when I saw who she was talking about. The man wore a dark, dark blue outfit with a yellow utility belt, and a red visor over his eyes with yellow frames.
Wait, she knew that guy? And why was his second name Cyclops?
Mr Cyclops gave us a slightly relieved smile. Then he turned his head to face another one that was flying towards him, adjusted and held down some dial on the side of his visor, and from that, he shot a red beam at the Sentinel from the lens of his visor. It pierced the robot straight through the face all the way down through one of the feet, and the Sentinel promptly exploded, with flaming parts falling out of the sky. Once that was done, he tapped a red and black 'X' on the part of his yellow utility belt that went over his chest, and then spoke into it.
"Cyclops here, I just found two kids that these Sentinels were after. Requesting a pickup at my location."
I gave Tanya a glare. I wasn't done with this.
"Okay. Understood," He took his hand off his earpiece and knelt down to our height to try and reassure us. "Hey kids, you're safe now. The Sentinels are gone. Are your parents around? Is there anywhere we can take you?"
I wanted to tell him I wasn't a kid, I was thirteen. I was a teenager, but Tanya elbowed me as soon as I opened my mouth.
"No," Tanya answered for us both. "They're not here. We're alone."
The man frowned a little.
"I see."
"He didn't kick us out or anything," Tanya elaborated, catching onto something in Mr Cyclops' reply, "He's just not here. It's... complicated. Can I say it's an honour to meet you?"
"We can help with complicated," the man smiled easily. "And thank you."
A man and a woman came into the clearing. They were both dressed similarly to our rescuer.
The woman was... She had reddish fur, and a dog's head, and a tail. It made her look like a werewolf, which was... kinda awesome.
"Cool," I couldn't help but say.
Her goddamn tail swished. "Ta, son."
The man on the was short and squat, which made him the same height as werewolf woman. and held the raptor that ran away over his shoulder.
He grunted. "Why do those kids smell like this feller over here?"
He pointed at us. We still hadn't gotten all of the vine gunk from the jungle off us.
Cyclops sighed. "Logan, what's that?"
"It's either barbeque, or a drop off to the Savage Land."
The raptor hissed weakly in complaint. After Cyclops stared him down for a few awkward seconds, Logan relented.
"...it's a drop off."
The wolf woman breathed a sigh of relief she didn't realizing she was holding in.
"Not a fan of exotic meat, Wolfsbane?"
"Aye, am no. Wouldnae want tae hurt a beastie like that yin at aw, ye ken?"
"It tried to eat us!" I protested.
Tanya gave me another elbowing, to keep me quiet.
Logan gave the raptor a flat look, and I'd never seen a dinosaur look so nervous before.
"Still," he continued. "You two don't look like you and this bub could have come from the same place. Spill the beans, kids."
I'm not a kid, I thought again. But then I saw Tanya open her mouth to speak gain, and I couldn't let it go.
She was trying to stay mum on something. The Sentinels, her trips through time, there was... something.
"It's fine," Tanya said. "We won't be around for long, it's just-"
"My sister keeps traveling through time and can't help it," I blurted out, louder and faster than Tanya could say.
She snapped her face to glare at me, almost furious. "Chris, you-"
I continued. She couldn't stop me from knowing. "What are those Sentinels? Where do they come from? Why do they exist?"
Tanya lunged for me, and tried to cover my mouth when Cyclops pulled her off of me. "-Stop, you shouldn't-"
"She says she's been to the future and she can't help it, They look like-"
"Don't tell him anything!" Tanya screamed at the adults, kicking and fighting out of Cyclops grip as best she could. She didn't budge him, but when she suddenly brightened up, her body charging to sent her through time again, Cyclops reflexively let go and backed away.
"Whaa-"
Time once again felt like it was at a standstill. I leapt up to grab her, to go with her, because I still wanted to go home. I reached out, and Tanya reached back, but we didn't connect. My sister had vanished in a blast of light before I could touch her. She was dragged through time once again; and this time, without me. Leaving me here. Wherever this place was. Whenever this place was.
"-aat the?"
"Oh, crap."
I couldn't help but curse. It wasn't like Tanya was there to admonish me for it. Even if I really, really wanted her to. None of the adults said anything about that. They just stared on where my sister was standing only seconds ago before her own powers pulled her away again, likely into more danger.
I didn't know when he moved, but Cyclops put a gentle, reassuring hand on my shoulder.
"It's okay. We can help you."
I nodded, a little numb. My adrenaline was crashing hard.
"What-" I gulped, my mouth suddenly dry. "what year is this, anyway?"
