Zackie played with the strings on the hood of his parka, shivering in the chilly moonlit grove. Squaring his shoulders and pulling his frostbitten fingers up inside his sleeves, he glanced up at his mother.

Young, vain, and beautiful, Zelda hid in the shadows of an ancient tree. In her arms, a baby slept, pressed against her blue silk robe. It began to wriggle in her arms.

"Now?" Zackie whispered.

"Not yet, Zachary," his mother said quietly. Zackie nodded and felt his mother's hand patting him lightly on the head.

The infant boy was very alert. Clearly, he sensed what she had heard. Now Zackie could hear it too. Someone was approaching. Fearing that it might be a warlock, Zelda dipped a finger into the herb pouch she wore around her waist, then brushed the honey-and-thyme potion across the stirring child's lips. She rocked the baby in her arms, willing it not to cry out. Not even to make a sound.

Already the infant's nearly colorless birth eyes were turning gray, the same startling gray as his brother, Zelda noted.

The midnight forest was beginning to scare Zackie as the sound of crunching snow made its way towards them. He tugged at his mother's robe.

"Mommy, I wanna go home," he whined.

"Shush, Zachary," his mother said. "Not yet." His mother was usually so talkative, always playing with him. But tonight she'd been so silent. And now she held up one finger to her lips, trying to shush him.

A shrouded figure came up to them. "Great witch?"

"Yes, Patty," Zelda breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm so glad you could make it." The petite woman was fidgeting, as if she was afraid of them. Zackie frowned, twisted around and eyed his mother suspiciously. Something felt wrong. Mommy was usually brave, which meant that she never ever cried. But she was very close to crying right now.

"Take the baby, Patty. Run fast and far. Find him protectors. Hide him," Zelda commanded, throwing back the hood of her silk robe. "The baby must never know the truth of his powers."

"Think, great witch --"

"Patty, please," Zelda insisted. "Here, help me remove his amulet." The amulet was a gold charm. It was shaped as a delicate half-moon. Zackie wore a different but matching charm, shaped as a golden sun.

"But great witch... how will the two brothers know each other if the baby doesn't have his amulet?"

"They must not know," Zelda declared, rocking the wriggling child. "They must never know." She then handed Patty the golden amulet. The pale woman accepted it, slipping the delicate charm into her pocket. Zackie's heartbeat quickened as his frustration increased. "Mommy," he growled, his voice louder this time. His mother seemed upset. Now, even her eyes were watering.

"Honey, please, shh," Zelda said quickly. "I already told you --"

The baby began to wail.

"Shut up, you little brat!" Zackie yelled suddenly. His voice broke as he glared angrily at his pampered little brother. "Just be quiet!"

Almost immediately, the baby went quiet and shrank back, snuggling closer towards the comforting warmth of his mother's body.

"Zachary Warren!" Zelda scolded his son. "That's enough! Be quiet!"

His face fell.

"Does the child have a name?" Patty asked as soon as Zelda handed her the baby boy.

"No. Not yet."

"Well... any ideas?"

Zelda sighed. "I don't know." She looked about nervously. "Um, listen, I have to go now. Just..." She gave the baby a soft, feathering kiss on his forehead. "No matter what," she said tearfully, "the child's name... let it start with the letter Z."

"Yes, but --"

Then Patty Wentworth froze.

She didn't freeze the way you freeze when you're scared. She'd turned into a flesh-and-blood statue, caught midword. As Zackie gaped at her, he realized something else was funny. The frogs had stopped croaking. The leaves had stopped bristling. Time had utterly halted! The forest was eerily silent.

He glanced up and saw his mother standing there, hands outstretched. The snow was starting to melt and soak through her robe. Her hood had fallen back around her neck and the water was dripping down her dark hair.

"I'm sorry, Patty," his mother said softly, tears streaking down her cheeks. "Please take care of my baby." With that, she took hold of Zackie's hand and together, they fled off into the night.

~ Ten Years Later ~

"Kill him!"

Kane Marshall's devious smile spilt into the ugliest grin he had ever seen as Kane continued staring at him from across the blue crash mats, animosity filling his eyes. His group of friends sat near him, egging him on.

What a loser, Zachary, now seventeen, thought as Kane brought up a lighter close to his face, then flicked it on and off, on and off. If he thinks he can scare me into losing the spar, Zack thought, then he’s gonna be in for a big disappointment.

Sensei blew his whistle and Zack got up onto his feet. Across the dojo hall, Kane got up too. "Hey, baby!" he yelled to his girlfriend, Jane. "Looking good!"

Zack looked up, his eyes filtering from one to another until he found Jane Morgan, Kane Marshall’s girlfriend. "Come on, Kane," ordered the coach.

"You and me, baby!" Kane shouted. Zack rolled his eyes.

Jane laughed. "Anytime!" she called out as Kane made his way menacingly towards him. Zack’s body tensed as Kane stepped into the ring.

Zack and Kane bowed to each other, then took fighting stances.

"Go!" Sensei called out.

Kane began with a flurry of punches and kicks, including a sidekick that looked powerful enough to send a cow flying. Zack avoided them all, blocking, dodging, and slipping out of the way. It was funny. His body felt light as he effortlessly got out of the way, never actually making contact.

Zack jumped to dodge a low-kick, and was stung by a moment of panic when he felt himself losing balance. Kane took the chance and pulled back his arm, made a fist, and threw it at him using all his strength.

Zack took the full brunt and fell back onto the crash mat. A tangy, coppery smell alerted his senses just seconds before his nose filled with blood. Putting his hand over his face, Zack sat up and blood ran out through his fingers and down his uniform.

Everybody was gasping, talking fast, and Sensei’s voice, urgent and in control, said, "Let me see that." When Sensei tried to pry Zack’s fingers away from his face, Zack pushed him away and got up.

"I’m okay," he lied and wiped the blood away. "No biggie."

Zack stepped back into the ring. Waves of anger rushed throughout his body as he saw Kane gave him a condescending smirk.

"Go!" Sensei called out.

Giving a loud shout, Zack jumped forward and rammed Kane in the stomach. As Kane threw an upper cut, Zack delivered a powerful punch to his solar plexus. He quickly followed it with a roundhouse kick, but Kane blocked and grabbed onto his feet just in time and flipped him backwards.

Zack fell, and looked up just in time as Kane delivered a wicked roundhouse kick to his jaw. Zack fell again, his head spinning.

Then everything went black.

When he finally came to, Zack was staring up at Scott. His soft brown hair was disheveled, and his slightly craggy face broke into a smile.

Arms crossed, eyes cocked, Homecoming King Scott Summers stood over Zack, and shot him a look of bemusement.

"Where are we?" Zack asked groggily. He nearly cried out loud when a searing pain tore through his lower back.

"Easy, okay?" Scott’s eyes twinkled mischievously. Zack had never figured what the colors of his best friend's eyes were. They were always a cross between deep blue and warm hazel. "KO for you, Zackie-boy. Marshall knocked you out in karate class."

Zack’s fine nose twitched. Oh my god, he thought, picking up a familiar smell. They were in the infirmary. "Yeah, yeah. Crap."

"So," Scott piped as he helped Zack up. "Have you found a date yet?"

"For what?"

Scott allowed his mouth to drop open in mock surprise. "The senior prom, you moron. It’s tonight and you’re telling me you haven’t got a date yet? I've already got one... or rather, she got me." With a sheepish grin, Scott scratched the back of his head and Zack swore that he was actually blushing.

"Huh," Zack snorted. "And who's the lucky girl?"

"Selena Fredrick."

"Selena who?"

"You know, the one in business class?"

Zack rolled his eyes. "No, I don't."

"Whatever," Scott rolled his eyes and dragged his friend out of the infirmary cot. "Come on. You don't need to have a date to go to the prom. Just go as an individual. Who knows? Maybe you'll hook onto a chick or something."

Easy for you to say, Zack mused bitterly as he trailed his best friend out of the infirmary. My whole life, girls avoided me like a plague if they weren't treating me like the latest exhibit at the zoo. He checked himself out as they walked past a glass door in the hallway. I don't get it, he thought. He was pretty much all an average girl could ask for in High School. Good-looking, dark-haired, nice build, good grades... So where are the chicks?

Subconsciously, he fingered with the sun-shaped charm he wore on a silver chain around his neck.

Cheap paint and tissue paper hung with hooks on a wall just behind the high school gymnasium’s basket-on-a-full-court. The theme was 'Rhapsody in Blue', and the decor had made tragic efforts to show it. The tablecloths were blue, the napkins were blue - far too many of the tuxes were powder blue. The blue eye shadow was as heavy as expected.

"Great," Zack muttered, gesturing at their identical dark blue suits. "Now I really feel like a freak. What happens if I turn into Carrie at the prom?"

Scott, however, paid no attention to him. He scanned the sea of heads, as if looking for somebody. "What are you looking for?" Zack asked.

Scott gave him a sheepish look and grinned. "My date. Remember? Business class?" He looked over at the refreshment tables and Zack swore his grin got even wider. Hope he grows up soon, Zack thought as he rolled his eyes, watching his best friend as he made his way across the floor to the benches. Life is more than some airhead bimbo and a tray of badly made truffles.

"Well, Mr. Warren. I hope you are having a smashing good time."

I'd rather be smashing Marshall's face. Zack yanked himself from his reverie and turned towards the familiar voice. It was Professor Hans, his Greek-mythology professor. Zack almost choked when he saw the costume he had chosen.

Professor Hans was dressed as a box of blue-colored chalks.

"Excellent verisimilitude, isn’t it?" he went on.

"Yeah," Zack replied casually, suppressing a laugh. I hope he isn’t talking about his costume, he thought as the professor sauntered away.

"Whoa, great costume," a lass in an octopus getup commented dryly as she tried to put as many of her rubbers arms as she could around Zack. "Wanna dance?"

Is she talking to me? The girl continued to smile at him. Yep, she's definitely talking to me. But why? He wasn't exactly the kind of person that trusted others easily. Zack took the two rubbers arms the girl managed to make contact with and tied them in a knot. "Maybe later," he told her. Feeling really stupid, Zack gave her a suggestive wink.

As the girl giggled and swayed off, Zack made a face. Might as well enjoy myself, he thought. Wouldn't wanna die fat and alone, and then be found three weeks later half-eaten by Alsatians.

Where was Scott? he mused a few moments later. He craned his neck to survey the room. All he could see were the other partygoers, and a sea of blue. 'Earth Angel' was playing, and the dance floor was filling up fast.

Opps, he thought as he quickly made he way through the sway of clutching and sweaty dancers to the boys’ bathroom. Nature's call.

Several boys were there, bow ties undone - unclipped in most cases. Smoking and drinking from whatever inventive container was used to smuggle in booze. Breath freshener and Visine were the only chasers. Some of the guys were rolling joints while others made the sad effort to wave smoke away.

Who are they kidding? Zack thought, coughing. The smoke was as thick as a fog. He did his business, went to the sink to wash up, and then pulled out a bottle of Visine, ready to save his eyes from a smoky fate when he heard a stifled cry from one of the toilet stalls.

"Scott?" Zack stopped in front of the last stall. His friend was sitting on the toilet bowl with his head in his hands, seemingly in some kind of pain.

Zack shook his head, turned to a mirror and began squeezing droplets of liquid from the bottle into his teary eyes. "What’s the matter?" he asked as he finished with his right eye and went to his left. "Got ditched by your... your, um... what's-her-name-again?"

Scott hissed in irritation. "No," he moaned. "It’s my eyes... they’re killing me."

Zack blinked away the excess liquid from his eyes and offered Scott the small plastic bottle. "You want some Visine?" he asked.

Scott ignored him. "My… eyes…"

"Are you okay?" Zack stared worriedly as he noticed that Scott's eyes are watering so badly that tears were literally streaming through his fingers. He quickly goes back to the mirror to look at his own, to check if he was also suffering from the same horrible fate.

"They're burning..." Scott continued. Zack turned back to him, wearing a frown. "Did you smoke?"

"I didn't smoke anything," Scott looked up, taking his hands away, revealing for an instant that his eyes are merely bright red embers in his head - featureless but for the color.

Zack’s jaws hit the floor. "My eyes..." Scott let out an excruciating yell of pain and as he looked on, a bright beam of red light shot from Scott’s eyes and hurtled straight towards him.

He screamed.

At that instant, just before the beam of light reached him, Zack felt an odd buzz of energy go through him.

The twelfth graders who were chatting, dancing and flirting in the gymnasium screamed when a blinding flash of red light flashed through the frosted glass in the double door and cut through the crack into the sea of blue.

For a moment, they were stunned. Frozen.

A lingering moment of confusion hung in the air, then - BOOM! - the doors to the boys’ bathroom burst open and the occupants scattered into the gym.

"Oh God," a freckled boy stood by the bathroom door, his legs locked as he looked at the remaining two occupants inside. "Oh my God," he said again and with shaky legs, staggered out of the bathroom.

Scott was crying meekly in the stall, covering his eyes again, afraid to open them. The door of the stall across from him swung closed to reveal a hole - punched through the stall door - framing Scott’s face perfectly. The hole continued through the wall, into the girls’ bathroom next door, where several girls huddled together, frightened. Selena Fredrick was there, gaping at the hole like a simpleton.

And Zack…

Zack was hovering near the ceiling with a shocked look on his face.

~ A Few Months Later ~

Scott was hanging upside down, legs strapped to a beam. His tied hands rested on the toilet seat, taking the full weight of his body.

Looking down into the scummy, stinking toilet, Scott wondered how long his punishment would last. Of course, he knew who was behind it all.

Blob.

There was something weird about Blob that terrified him. Blob was weird. Blob was mad.

Through his glasses, Scott checked his watch and saw that he had been suspended for almost half an hour, although it felt much longer.

Apart from the sick feeling and the sour taste building up in his throat, the blood that had run to his head was making his temples pound terribly. A large dirty handkerchief gagged him, threatening to choke him. Suppose he was sick. Would he be suffocated by his own vomit?

Blob’s physical strength had been a surprise. Scott had fought fists and head and feet, but Blob was stronger. The other two would definitely have been able to restrain him, but Scott had to admit that Blob alone was more than enough.

Him and his freaky friends, he cursed. The blood pounding in his temples was making him increasingly dizzy and it was hard to think straight at all. He kicked and squirmed again, but the rope that was tied round his ankles was too tight.

Anyway, even if he did break free, Scott knew he would fall like a stone and probably crack his head open. He’d just have to wait for rescue - if it ever came at all.

Meanwhile, the insect life in the abandoned toilet was readjusting to the upside-down figure of the eighteen-year-old intruder. When Scott had been strung up - still struggling - the spiders, beetles and cockroaches had retreated to their lairs.

But now, to his disgust, they were gradually and relentlessly returning. A vast web, thick with dead flies, shook slightly under the toilet as its dark occupant stirred.

A black beetle scuttled across the dusty floor and a cockroach flew past his face, and it took all of Scott not to scream. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, anyway. He always had a creeping horror of insects. Now he was surrounded by them.

Why do these things happen only to me? Scott thought. The past year had been pretty harsh on him already. About a year back, he had almost killed his best friend, Zack, with a sudden outburst of mutant power. And the only reason Zack hadn't died was because his own mutant power unleashed and saved him. He had literally flown out of the way.

But Scott couldn’t use his power now. Not without his custom-made ruby quartz visors. If he’d used his power, chances that he’d blow off his legs along with the ropes were pretty high.

Jean trudged past the abandoned toilet block, anxious to kill time. She’d been at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters - Westchester, New York - for two weeks of the summer term, and still hadn’t made any friends. As a result, free time seemed to last an eternity.

As usual, she had eaten lunch alone in the canteen, self-consciously trying to select a table where someone else might be alone, but finding only crowds of friends, laughing and joking, shutting her out.

All the other students had been together for a couple of years, and she had known she’d be an outsider right from the start - but not till this extent. Her loneliness hurt badly.

So, in spare moments that seemed to stretch eternity, she read her favorite series - Dream Stealer - and no wonder she was already up to book number nine. As she read, however, Jean wondered desperately how long her isolation would last.

She had moved to New York from Boston and Jean, smart, charming and beautiful with her cinnamon brown hair and clear complexion, had been happy at the school in Boston where she had had plenty of friends and had never felt lonely at all. Last summer she had tried sailing, canoeing and junior golf on a village green.

Here, where everything was urban and unfamiliar, she felt trapped.

It was because of her unusual gift that had landed her here and caused her parents to shun her. She hated herself. She was invisible.

Yes - that was exactly how she felt, Jean thought. She was the invisible child. Her parents obviously didn’t feel like that at all. Dad and Mum moved away into the city, where they loved their new jobs and Jean never heard of them ever since.

But it was the day a few months back when her best friend, Anne, died that gave her the final blow. Not only had she witnessed her dear friend’s death, Jean had actually felt her friend’s pain. It was later on when she had enrolled into the Institute, or the X Manor as some referred it to, that Jean realized she was a telepath.

The principal, Professor Xavier, acted as her therapist and helped her blocked the painful trauma that had scarred her emotionally. Jean was then able to live a much normal live from then on… until she discovered she had telekinetic powers a few weeks ago.

What an eventful life.

The broken-down doors of the toilets was swinging open in the bright May sunshine and Jean smelt a sour, shut-in smell which seemed to represent everything she disliked about New York, and the X Manor in particular.

Then she thought she heard a noise - a kind of mumbling sound. Weren’t these toilets where the smokers went? If so, she thought, I’d better move on.

Jean didn’t like smokers - or smoking. Her roommate smoked at least twenty a day, and the new room already smelt acrid. She couldn’t remember her own house smelling like that.

The mumbling sound came again, but this time it was like a desperate grunt. Jean paused and then cautiously went inside.

Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open, staring up incredulously at the nightmare figure.

Dangling by his ankles, strapped to a beam, the boy’s face was kind of reddish black, and as he began to thump his tied hands on the filthy toilet seat, the grunting became a coughing howl.

"Oh my God," Jean whispered. But she didn’t move, and the muffled grunting became even louder while the boy’s hands thumped the toilet seat so hard that some of the plastic broke away in little shards.

Jean finally found her strength and stumbled into the stifling space. It didn’t take long to pull out the gag and untie the boy’s hands, but Jean wasn’t tall enough to reach the beam. Then she realized she would be if she stood on the toilet seat… or if she used her own particular power.

Jean took a deep breath and concentrated, aiming all her energy at the cords round the boy’s ankles, whose face is now a near purple.

Slowly, the cords, on their own volition, began to come loose. A few seconds later, it suddenly slackened and the boy fell. He landed on top of her.

The boy’s face was still a strange muddy red color, slowly turning to a chalk white as he continued to lie on her.

When Jean saw him blinking down at her through his tinted glasses and with a gasp, jumped off, she chuckled a little as he leant against a wall, breathing heavily, chest heaving.

"Thanks," the boy said. Then he added shyly, "Uh, what’s your name?"

Jean could have sworn that his face was turning red again, but this time he was blushing. Never in her life had Jean ever seen a guy blush. At least not because of her. But you gotta admit, she thought, he looks kinda cute.

"Uh, Jean Grey," she answered.

"Scott. Scott Summers." And then he smiled, and Jean felt that this was her best day ever since she got here.