Variable X: Prelude by Jim Gould jgould@holli.com Disclaimer: Names, characters, and places associated with the current Marvel Universe are property of Marvel Comics. The characters "Case" and "Wolf" -- questionable originality nonetheless -- are mine. I'm not making a profit off of this, unless it's all the neat comments and support I shall hopefully reap. Please do not sue me. Please? Thanks. --- In the beginning, it was just me. John Earlywine against the world, and nothing inbetween but a lot of bitterness and a sense of betrayal on both sides. I knew because of the damn headaches, early on, that I was a mutant. I was different, and I betrayed the world. The world hated me because I was different, and the betrayal never ended. I don't remember exactly when I took the name. It was before the X-Men began running around in spandex and thwarting the master plans of folks like Sinister and all of those other, earlier people. It was after the CIA years; I worked under the name Edwin Marsellus for the CIA as a weapons specialist from the tender age of seventeen until I was twenty-five. I'm still not at liberty to talk about what I did for them, but man, would you ever shit if you knew. We'll just leave it at that I've killed before and I don't think I'm done doing it. Part of me is disgusted with this revelation, and part -- dare I say -- is pleased. But after I went back into the public sector, I knew I couldn't be either name anymore, except to maybe my closest friends... so I became Case. Why "Case"? Why not? I kind of liked the sound of it; besides, people were always calling me ten kinds of hardcase. I let them think I was merely shortening the term of endearment. So for the next few years, I ran around the world as Case, free-lance mercenary and sometime assassin. Like I said. I've killed before... While I was in that situation, I fell in with another guy who called himself Logan, whom I thought I recognized from someplace, but couldn't remember where. Logan was a tough, short guy with an attitude and an appetite to parallel mine. He had a pretty far-out hairdo, to say the least, but then again, I wasn't exactly Vidal Sassoon, myself. We knocked around Madripoor and some other dangerous places for a couple of years, and eventually parted ways when some bigwig from England hired me to play buddy-bodyguard for a few months. Eventually I found my way back home to the US of A. Good ol' homeland that it was, it welcomed me back with open arms and a body cavity search at customs. That delightful gift from the nation of my birth out of my way, I headed out west to the Great Plains. I had known for a long time that part of the reason I was such a damn good shot was because of my power, but I had yet to learn how to use it beyond making sure the gun got into my hand and didn't leave until I wanted it to, or making sure the shots hit home. There was a guy out there in Wyoming, a guy by the name of Ben Cross, and I wish I didn't remember his name. He'd been a telekinetic for longer than I'd been alive, and he was at least three times my age. He drilled me like a motherfucker; I spent sixteen months sharing a large, empty house in a no-name small town with him, and in that time I learned more about moving things with my mind -- including myself -- than I ever thought I could, or really wanted to. I also discovered what I'd mistaken for an innate sense of what my opponent was thinking was my undeveloped telepathy, manifesting itself in a subtle fashion. Ben told me that using the meditation techniques he'd taught me, I could develop that other power, as well; I could learn to keep others' thoughts out of my mind once I could hear them, and protect myself from mental invasion from other powerful psi's. Personally, I thought the whole meditation thing was a load of shit at first, but it turned out to be a worthwhile -- but slow -- process. During the year and some I spent with Cross and the following three years I spent hiding myself away from the world to learn about my power, the X-Men came on the scene, and by the time I came out my self-imposed exile, had been replaced by a new team of mutants. Damn if there wasn't a familiar-looking shorter kind of guy on that team, too, although my mind was so messed up from all that time alone that I couldn't place him. I'd always thought the idea of super-teams was pretty ridiculous. I'd never been all that big on the Fantastic Four, or the Avengers. But a team of mutants was doubly hard for me to accept. It was unbelievable to me that these people thought enough of a world that all but tried to kill them on sight to try to save it. Maybe I wasn't heroic enough, or stupid enough; I just could not make sense of the whole thing. So I nosed around with some old buddies who were in the know about this new team, and got the word that they were based at a school in one of the East Coast states. So I headed out there and showed up on the doorstep of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Sure enough, I found what I'd been looking for. I won't go into great detail here, but sure enough, there they were. Understandably, my presence caused a large case of jitters among most of those who didn't know me, but Logan turned out to be there, too, and he vouched for me. Good guy, that Logan. Anyway, the "headmaster," Charles Xavier, sat me down to speak with him about his Dream. He was almost fanatical about it, the way he said it. I assumed in his mind it was capitalized. In fact, I'm going to relate that conversation just the way I remember it. I'm not saying it's wholly accurate, since I'm rarely that, but this is what I recall. "Mr. Earlywine --" "Call me Case, Professor. I've kind of grown used to that name." That gave Xavier reason to pause, even just for a second. If I was the kind who could still be intimidated, I'd be apologizing for interrupting him. I'm pretty sure that's something that he wasn't used to. "Case, then." A graceful amendment. Despite myself, I was starting to sort of like the guy. "I'm not used to mutants just showing up on my doorstep. Usually Cerebro detects manifestation of the X-factor in someone and we track it down." "Ah, I see. I caught you folks with your pants down, in a manner of speaking." Xavier smiled slightly. "In a manner of speaking. "Anyway, Case, I hope that is an adequate explanation of why my students reacted so violently to your presence at first. There is a constant, underlying fear among those who live here of being brought out into the open and exposed to the world for what they are." "I see." I didn't. If they could just beat away any resistance that came their way, why bother hiding? Apparently my psi-screen wasn't yet developed enough to keep that stray "shout" of disbelief from Xavier. "I understand your confusion about the way we do things, Case. But the world is not yet safe for mutantkind to live amongst the normal populace, displaying their incredible abilities in plain sight. That, however, is my Dream for the future." He turned his head to look out the window at some of his "students." A moment's pause, and then he said, "That is why I brought the X-Men together. I don't believe in any way but a peaceful way to heal the ever-growing rift between mutants and non-mutants." He turned back to look at me, and his gaze was intense. "There are those who are like you and I -- fellow mutants -- that would rather assert their superiority by ruling the world. The X-Men were formed to keep humanity free from the domination of such tormented souls." "So you're the Mutant Armed Forces." Xavier smiled again, wryly. "Again, Case -- in a manner of speaking." "So who, exactly, is your opposition? I've heard about the living island, but nothing more." He paused, as though he was about to tell a long story. Instead, he merely said, "Magneto, self-proclaimed Master of Magnetism. He and I go very far back, and the way we look at these issues of mutantkind differ radically. While I favor the aforementioned peaceful method of integration, Magnus tends to go towards the more radical, more violent aspects, which can only lead to more alienation. From him and those like him, the X-Men labor to protect humanity." I sat and thought for a short while, being careful to keep the "volume" of my thoughts below the level that would draw Xavier's scrutiny. Finally, and after much deliberation, I said, "Perhaps humanity needs to be slapped in the face." In all the years that I've known Charles Xavier since then, I have never seen him quite so shocked or horrified as he was when I said those words. However, I did not give him the chance to continue, eager as I was to share my opinion of what it was to be a mutant with one of my kind after so long. "Why aren't we accepted? It's because we're different. Look at the civil rights movement. There are still folks who fear black people, and that's not even because of strange powers. That's because of color. "With those kinds of odds to overcome, who wants to bother? Not necessarily me, Professor. I would have to be convinced that your... dream... is a lot more possible than what I'm seeing right now. Humans will never accept us, sir. "And I will never accept them." Strong words, I know now, looking back at my days of relative youth. I was bitter, yes, and I still am. But even then, I wasn't looking at humanity and finding it inferior. At no time would I have hurt a human being for being a non-mutant. But I was a lot less ready to accept those who reviled me for being different. I made sure the Professor knew this, yet my words had shocked him more than either of us thought possible. He sat there behind the desk, shaking his head slightly, with a sad expression on his face. His eyes were focused on some paper on his desk, not really seeing it. When he finally looked up at me again, he only said, "You sound like an old friend of mine, Case. I can only hope you never reach his heights." So now you know how well Charles Xavier, world's most powerful telepath, etc., and I saw eye to eye at first. As the years wore on, I was able to see his point more and more; so, apparently, was Magneto. I wasn't very surprised to learn of his ascendancy to headmaster of the school, and I was disappointed when he left, believing himself a failure. I hung around the school a lot in those years, getting to know the X-Men and the New Mutants. Only some of them truly understood the way I felt about things, but everyone got along with me well enough. Well, most everyone; Scott Summers and I disagreed about everything, just on principle. He thought I was a bloodthirsty sociopath with no morals and less inclination to do "right." I thought he was a pompous ass. I often told him so. I made good friends there, and I still claim them as friends to this day. Logan, of course, since we'd spent years busting heads in the dark, dank corners of the world together. I got along well with Hank McCoy, and took as many chances as I could to try taxing his mind as well as his patience. Later on -- much, much later on -- I even got past Bishop's initial distrust, discovering that past the barrier of steely self-imposed distance was a trustworthy comrade. Eventually, I ended up meeting with some of the other groups through the X-Men, including the government-backed X-Factor and the Britain-based Excalibur. Not a lot of folks shared the Summers view of yours truly. With the exception of Brian Braddock and Val Cooper, most everyone decided not to take an opinion of me based on my past. Cooper was understandable; I would imagine I'm a textbook example of how not to go about espionage. Braddock, however, may have been irked by my continual insistence on referring to him as "that Captain guy wearing a flag." Some folks have no sense of humor. Well, with some minor exceptions, that's my history with the mutant community. Until recently. I'd had some exchanges in my early years with some of the guys who were involved in Weapon X up in Canada, enough to get me some strange, post-experimental stuff that keeps some of those boys so ageless; I'm betting it's what they stuck in Captain America, only souped-up a lot more. Let me tell you, it ain't Oil of Olay; it makes your veins burn like you'd be bleeding fire if you got cut. It's some wacky stuff, as some of my younger pals would say. Anyway, a project like that doesn't just let the ones that they reject after all that enhancement run free like caribou or something. They either lock them up, or bury them before their time. The lucky ones that escape both fates live life on the run. It's because of one of those that I got the only assignment I ever failed to complete during my work for our fine government, and that's when I met the man who would begin to assist me in forming a team of mutants willing to go into the worst of situations. I failed to bring this guy in, or bring him down. Not because I was a bad soldier; it was because he didn't deserve it. I had him in custody, and I let him go on the way back to local HQ. That was the first and last time I went against orders, and I still know that it was worth it. I gained one of the closest friends I've ever had, and I know that if I should ever fall, there's someone who'll pick up the work of making Xavier's dream come true. Wolf can often seem just this side of feral. He believes in the beast within himself. What my pal Logan's spent years fighting, Wolf embraced, and somehow merged with his humanity. Sometimes when he gets locked in hand-to-hand with someone, he pulls off the lid that holds the Beast down, and unhinges. Usually his opponent ends up in ribbons. But past all that is someone who'd give his life for his team-mates and friends. The guy we all call Wolf is actually named Hank Bernhard, and he's from the same fine state as I am originally; no one can say nothing comes from Ohio anymore. (I mean, look at the Deals. Okay, look at Kim. But that's an aside.) Why he was in Canada in the sixties, I don't know. I don't even know why the hell he calls himself Wolf. But if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me. So I call him Wolf. Wolf and I met up again after I'd been hanging with the X-Men for a good few years, and I told him about Xavier and his Dream. I figure if there's anyone who'd want to see mutants and humans live together in relative peace, it's a guy whose whole life has been nothing but war. So Wolf and I jumped into the middle of all the rest of the mutant groups as a duo, calling ourselves Variable X. We got some weird looks at first, since we didn't really have a "purpose for being teamed up"; the X-Men were your typical "save-the-world" crew, X-Factor were the government-backed mutant-hunters/underground mutant-saviors, and the rest of the groups had their other specialities that made them distinct from the others. The only thing that kept us from joining X-Force or something like that was that we had not fully acclimated ourselves to the Dream. Wolf and I had to struggle to contain our killer instinct; for that reason, in the way we did things, we were somewhere between Xavier and Magneto. That's a good deal of why Summers doesn't like me, right there. He's overboard on the whole peace issue. I thought it was weird at first that I got along so well with Cable, since they're supposed to be related somehow, but it just goes to show that the son walks his own path. And, hell, Nate and I have a lot in common. And Magneto... a man driven by shame, guilt, and the fear of failure. I liked him immensely. However, I didn't really agree with the way he did things. There's two ways to deal with someone who calls himself your enemy. One, you choose to look past his hatred, and make him your brother. Two, you hate him back, and make him your enemy as well. I try anymore to go with the former. On that, Magnus and I disagreed a lot of the time. I didn't join the Acolytes, because I saw Magnus as more of an equal than as a "Lord." Plus, regardless of how bitter I was about the rift between my kind and humanity, regardless of how I wanted to go berserk whenever I saw a Friends of Humanity meeting advertised so blatantly on city streets, I never held it against people who didn't possess the X-factor. I learned, in my life to date, that humans -- by that, I don't mean non-mutants -- as a species, we thrive on hatred. We feel more unified and closer to our neighbor if there's a common enemy we all share, someone to blame all the world's problems on while we sit on the front porch, kickin' back with a beer or seven. Bigotry is well within the grasp of every man, woman, and child on this planet, and unfortunately, not everyone has risen above it. I don't think we ever totally will. There will always be the motorist who hastily locks her doors when she sees "suspicious" youths walk past her car. There will always be at least one man who blames an entire race for losing his job. And there will always be too many people too willing to toss out a word I hate to the core of my soul, willing to label someone and just walk away, knowing they've done their job for humanity that day. Mutie. There's a lot of meaning in that word. There's hatred, contempt... and there's fear. When you get down to it, most of the hatred that's in the world today comes from basic fear. There are people who hate mutants because they've run out of people to acceptably hate in this enlightened age, and there are those who fear the threat that widespread mutancy could bring to their cities, their neighborhoods... their homes. Magnus never could draw that line. There are those who are wrong because they were raised to be, and there are those who are wrong because they're afraid. That's what Variable X is all about. What the FOH, or The Right, or any other bunch like that does is wrong, and we detest that sort of prejudice. But we're not out to save mutantkind. Variable X is about violent men and women learning to control their urges and their rage, for the sake of a better day in the future, where the line between human and mutant is blurred to the point that there's really no difference at all. Some of you might be confused with the way I feel now, opposed to how I felt about things during my first conversation with Charles Xavier. Well, yeah... but that's part of growing up. Maybe someday, I'll settle down enough to fully agree with Charles; I'm well on my way. But not today. It's hard to change, and it can't be done overnight. As I write this, I feel a sort of sense of idealism. It's kind of funny I wrote all that so well, since Wolf's the better one with words. I think Hank -- both of them -- would be proud. It was actually Wolf's idea to name ourselves Variable X; he said that our successes in controlling our impulses weren't guaranteed, but were constantly changing. I don't know. He's a lot better with words than I am. --- This is a bit of an exposition for a series of stories I've got brewing, dealing with the (non-existent) team I've created. I always thought it'd be neat to have a middle ground between Charles and Magnus, and so I'm establishing it... or building on the foundations of others. Plus, I need to flex my creative muscles, and how better to do so by using someone else's characters to build on? Comments, etc., are welcome. Flames, however, are understandably not. Thanks for giving me the forum to post this in; I'm open to constructive criticism, but I'd like praise. It's better than money. :D Jim