Subject: [OTL]: (Timewind Arc; Arawn Richards) Xavierbane (PG-15) Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 19:56:32 -0700 (PDT) From: Phil Hartman will1@earthling.net Timewind Arc Xavierbane by Phil Hartman DISCLAIMER: Arawn, his siblings and their friends are all mine. Their parents, ancestors and the general setting are Marvel's. No money is being made off of this. Please don't sue. NOTE: I've been WAY remiss in getting the 'fic out lately - moving will do that to a guy :) More coming soon, I promise ... including Summerswind. Really :/ NOTE 2/WARNING: Graphic language, semi-mature themes ... psionic vampires are SUCH a pain to write :/ -------------------------------------------------------- 9/2020: -------------------------------------------------------- Hmm. An aftertaste of fear and pain. Believe it or not, we "psi-vamps" - petty bastardization of our full definition - don't like negative emotions when we feed. And very few of us actually drain to the point of extinguishing someone. The sadists do, of course, but I'm not one of those. Not in terms of what I have to do to stay alive - oh, don't fear for the gangbanger here. He'll recover in a day or so. Consider me a darker form of "Good Samaritan" - keeping the urban scum down through selective panic. My name is Arawn Damien Richards. Yes, my mother had a petty sense of cruel humor when she chose my middle name. I have to blame both of my parents - Franklin Richards, only son of the founders of the legendary Fantastic Four, and Rachel Summers-Richards, eldest child of the X-Men Cyclops and Phoenix I - for my first name. I was, after all, named for the Celtic god of the dead. I'm more commonly called "Xavierbane," by those in the know. My first and only ... extinguishing ... of someone I fed upon was my first ... target, if you wish. It certainly wasn't a conscious decision on my part. You see, I am responsible for the end of the existence of one Professor Charles Francis Xavier, the founder of the X-Men. He was attempting to psionically probe my hours-old psyche only hours after my conception, and somehow triggered my primary mutation. Yes, I said "conception." I was born less than 24 hours after my making, when Xavier triggered my psionic vampirism and I unknowingly devoured his psyche. His life flowed into me, rapidly aging me from zygote to full-term. The process also forced my extremely early delivery and almost cost my mother her own life. That she conceived again, so quickly - days after my birth, actually - was in itself very unusual. Then again, Rachel Richards is the Phoenix Host, and its recuperative aspects probably allowed her to recover as fast as she did. I've often wondered why Mother conceived so rapidly after my "birth." Perhaps she sought to purify herself of the "evil" she'd borne, by bearing "pure" offspring ? She detests me. Oh, she'd never say it aloud, and she does love me in a bitter sense, but we're both Omega-class telepaths. The thoughts of family are easily heard, even without active psi-scanning. I'm not nicknamed "Xavierbane" without reason, you understand. Throughout my childhood, I was whispered about behind the hands of elder X-folk and openly scorned, even attacked, by my peers. Of course, I learned to fend off the physical attacks - you learn combat skills almost as easily as breathing when you're the son of former superheroes - rapidly. But the pain of maternal rejection is not so easily overcome. Father ? He means well. But between the post-Lehnsherr-War economic recovery Richtech spearheaded, and his own industrial-political machinations, Franklin Richards has precious little time for his four children. I don't mean to sound bitter about him; he does sincerely care, and sincerely tries, as a father. And he has better children to care for. Or so the gossips of the new mutant high society whisper. You must understand, I was "born" in early June, 2006, almost to the day of the beginning of the Lehnsherr War. My bizarre "gestation" cost the X-Men, and the superheroes in general, perhaps their best chance at stopping the devastation of the Lehnsherr War. Charles Xavier was, after Magneto, the most recognized and accepted mutant leader among both mutants and humans. Between Abaddon's kin-slaying of his own father in Genosha, and my inadvertent extinction of Xavier, the majority of mutantkind was left politically adrift in an eyeblink. Abaddon swept through Genosha with the speed only a demagogue can muster. The X-teams, devastated at the loss of their founder and their betrayal by Abaddon, were slow to gather their forces and counter the mad ravings of Charles Xavier Lehnsherr. He shaped Genosha into a massive weapon of destruction in only weeks. Is it any wonder, then, that after the deaths of 25 million people - 20 million of them mutants, when Genosha fell - and near-untold global devastation, that someone was to be blamed for the carnage ? Abaddon was believed dead, and Magneto and Xavier were long ago in the grave. I was an easy, and perhaps fitting, scapegoat. Father, of course, denies that, but I'm no fool. I may not be the super-genius that Franklin or Reed Richards are, but I do possess genetically-enhanced intellect, as well as psi-powers. And any telepath can "hear" the whispered rumors and slanders very easily. I left home earlier this year, at my birthday. 14 is the age of majority for mutant youth, since the Mutagenetics Laws of 2007 established the XSE and the Regulations. Nevertheless, 14 is still young, even for a genetically-superior youth. No, I'm not one of those Genoshan-worshipping mutant supremacists. But there is a definite aura of separation mutants exhibit around humans - compare me to a human youth of the same age, and I'm bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, even without my psi-talents or my enhanced intellect. I state fact, often brutally. My cruelty and my vigilantism are my shields against being hurt anymore. I appear as a Goth, to some - black faux-leather unstable molecule bodysuit, often with a deathly-pale face. The cropped red hair and blue eyes give a lie to the Goth-appearance, of course. I could dye it, but I want kith and kin to realize that I refuse to go quietly into the shadows. Mother, to her credit, neither sought to hold me too much or allow me to go too quietly when I reached my majority earlier this year. She does care, I admit. But I've been too deeply cut by her to remain. It's not that she was ever abusive. But between the undercurrent of telempathic reality she always projected around me, and her own lingering guilt about carrying the Xavierbane, Rachel Richards has never precisely been a warm and caring mother to me. She did try, when I declared independence, to reach out to me. I needed to go. I almost didn't want to. Father was much more concerned and worried about me, but I could no more heed him than I could Mother. I suspect a perverse part of me wanted to see the great Psi-Lord undercut, just once. Lord knows I took my revenge upon Aidan. The second son of the greatest family of mutants alive today, Aidan Daniel Richards is the male of the twin children born to my parents almost a year to the day after my own unnatural entrance into the world. He and I are disturbingly similar in appearance - cropped red hair, wiry frame - but his eyes are green to my blue, and he has a much better flesh-tone than I ever will. Where I devour life-force, he merely absorbs ambient psionic energy, the better to boost his powers. We are polar opposites. I am a bitter realist, seeing life in terms of predator and prey. Aidan is an idealist, still full of young hope and true love, still kicking himself for what Sinister did to Aidan's first love, Ninaeve Cassidy (1). By the Night, how I detest and envy Aidan. He possesses all the known psi-gifts - telepathy, telekinesis, clairsentience, teleportation, premonitions (not full chronovariance, but still more than I'll ever know), cyberkinesis, and healing, as well as his own unique psionic absorption/manipulation talent. Healing. To my psionic vampirism. Opposites, as I said. If the boy would just apply himself, he could free the Cassidy girl from her stasis pod. Perhapsm that's why I assisted Aidan in his quest to recover his friend Wisdom from the timestream, and to save Aislinn from being railroaded (2). It certainly wasn't brotherly love or altruism. I wanted to push the brat to explore his own strengths. At least if he gets Ninaeve back, he might not whine so much. We are half-Summers, after all; angst isn't unknown to us. If Aidan would just work at his gifts, he could be the leader this next generation of mutants so desperately needs. We are not without enemies, yet. Sinister's continued existence, as well as the increasingly-fascist practices of the XSE, are proof of those threats. I'm not suited for leadership. My reputation precedes me, and I am bound to the dark. Aislinn ... another potential leader. Little sister, one of the few relatives I truly care for. Her power and commitment to mastering it are both superb, and commendable. The greatest chronovariant known to exist in her generation, She is unafraid to plumb the depths of the timestream. I pray she does not lose her way before she masters her might. And Bryce - yes, Bryce. Littlest of us, yet gifted in ways not even my "omnipotent" father can yet foresee. Why should a first-grader, even one with the genetic inheritance Bryce has, be such a powerful telepath at such a young age ? He will shake the astral plane when he comes into his own. I may not be a chronopath, but I can tell that Bryce Richards may be the most surprising of my siblings. If he or Aislinn - or yes, even Aidan - need me, I will come forth. Blood calls to blood. Why, you ask, don't I just join the third team of New Mutants ? I'm "just" a year older than they are, after all. Certainly, I could fit in with some of them. Hmph. I'm the boogieman of Aidan's generation - my generation, actually, come to think of it. "Eat your vegetables, or the Xavierbane will suck you dry." That, and I have chosen my place in mutant society. I may never again see the light of Neohattan's spires, looming above the 10-Floor Ceiling of Old Manhattan, but I was never truly part of that world anyhow. It's best here, in the dark, where I can accomplish some good by keeping the worst of the Underdwellers from attempting to scale the shining artificial Olympus built in the wake of the Manhattan Catastrophe of '06. (Who would have thought that, near the close of a war of superpowered beings, a "mere" asteroid would hit Manhattan and cause more devastation than the preceding five months of conflict ? The irony never ceases to amaze me.) I am the rumor that keeps the darker things at bay. I am the Boogieman. I am the Xavierbane. Cry not for me. -------------------------------------------------------- finis ... ? -------------------------------------------------------- Footnotes: (1) Timewind: Pyrotic Lament (2): Timewind: A Line in the Sand