February 2, 1999

Emergence. That’s what the world called it when a mutant’s powers first activated. 95% of mutants Emerged during puberty, or around ages 10-17. The remaining 5% are called latent mutants. Though they possess the genes for mutant powers, they do not typically express themselves. However, there are verified records of latent mutants gaining powers in response to extreme stimuli, like significant physical or emotional trauma. The Chernobyl Man, a 35-year-old worker who was trapped in the reactor room during the famous meltdown, and gained the ability to create an energy shield that blocked radiation as a result is perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon.

In those who Emerge during puberty, in addition to whatever powers the person may gain, their bodies tend to become ‘optimized’, genetically speaking. Speed, strength, senses, and so on are all increased to the high end of what a normal human could experience. Likewise, they produce more of certain chemicals than a normal human does, such as adrenaline. This process also tends to make the mutants more photogenic, though there are exceptions. However, the process also creates intense hormonal shifts, in addition to what normally occurs during puberty.

This leads to the primary issues when dealing with the newly Emerged. Most new mutants have little control over their powers when they first activate. They tend to respond to emotional triggers until the Emerged learns to control their power. Given that teenagers are emotional wrecks to begin with, even before the additional hormonal changes that come with Emergence, this means that, for at least the first year, a mutant’s powers may activate sporadically, or without their consent.

Emerged powers typically fall into one of four categories. While some may possess traits of multiple categories, these powers tend to fall into the same theme (an energy controller using that energy to make their body fly, for instance). The categories are:

Body Manipulation: This includes most changes to the mutant’s body. Superhuman strength, metal skin, shapeshifting, being able to secrete poisons, and so on are typical of powers in this group. These powers tend to be simple in scope, but can be incredibly powerful. Also included are powers that cause direct changes in other people’s bodies, such as the rare Healing power. Most of those unfortunate mutants who possess altered physical features (like a beak, or excess layers of fat, or slimy skin) have them as a result of body manipulation powers. Body Manipulation powers are by far the most common, at 52% of the mutant population.

Mental Manipulation: This includes such things as telepathy, mind control, precognition, and other powers that are primarily mental in nature. These powers tended to be rather insidious in nature, a fact that was balanced out by the fact that most of their users tended to use actions or other things as a mnemonic to focus their abilities. This category would be the one that is most feared (or at least mistrusted) of the four. Approximately 15% of the mutant population has Mental Manipulation powers.

Technological: This includes things like technopaths, super-science, and other such abilities. It also is the one branch of powers that has been found to be able to grant ‘normals’ the ability to use powers. While some super-science creations can only safely be used by their creators, many can be used by others, and some can be mass produced. The rarest of the four, only 5% of mutants have Technological powers.

Environmental Manipulation: This includes control of the four elements, as well as most ‘creation’ type powers, and even spatial manipulation abilities like teleportation. Other than Body Manipulation powers, these are the most common, with 27% of the mutant population.

The remaining 1% are known as ‘Wildcards’. These powers are inherently unpredictable. One of the best known Wildcards is Nemesis, whose signature ability allowed him to instantly counter any power used in his vicinity.

This is all important because, as a teenager who had been brought up to distrust and fear mutants, and indeed verged on racist prejudice against them, young Mirikon Mollen was going through an incredibly difficult time right now. The incident on Christmas Eve was easy enough to ignore. But the events that followed could not simply be put aside.

It started the day after Christmas, when his uncle had gotten a little too much egg nog in his system. As he had been through three failed marriages, and was working on his fourth, his uncle believed himself to be the perfect fount of relationship advice for the young man who had been single all his fifteen years of life. So what if that ‘advice’ came in the way of teasing jokes and questions about his masculinity or sexual orientation?

He’d held it together during the family gathering, but later, when he was in the bath, Mirikon fumed. And as he let his thoughts run wild with pictures of getting revenge (some poetic, some simply violent) upon his uncle, time passed by, until he realized that he’d been in the bath for an hour. As he tried to get out of the bath, he realized something else: he was currently stuck in an ice cube filling the entire bathtub.

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Getting out of that situation without being discovered had been… problematic, to say the least. But it had also shattered any chance of his denying what had happened to him. To say he had trouble coming to terms with this new reality would be understating the situation quite a lot.

After the initial shock passed, he barreled full on into anger and self-loathing. The emotions would key his uncontrolled powers, sometimes freezing objects he was touching, and sometimes just causing a cloud of icy mist to follow him. And these outbreaks caused him to panic, which did absolutely nothing to get them to die down. One lasted for a solid hour before he was too drained to worry (and thus relaxing enough for the outbreak to stop).

The next few weeks were predictable enough. As his mental state deteriorated, he became withdrawn and isolated. People started asking if he had started doing drugs, or if there was something wrong at home. Of course he couldn’t tell them the truth, that would mean accepting what he was becoming! No, he drew in on himself, his self-loathing feeding on itself in a vicious cycle.

Finally, it came down to one night, early in February. His parents had taken his little sister out to a movie to celebrate her birthday. He was invited, of course, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t go with them. The disappointed look on his sister’s face as they left was what finally broke his trance. As his parents drove off, Mirikon went to his dad’s study, and pulled out the gun that his father kept there. It was a revolver, a .357 Magnum like in that old cop movie. That would do the job, right?

Mechanically, he wrote out a suicide note. Even in his own head, he knew it sounded trite and cliché, full of how he couldn’t accept what he was, and how he hated himself for being like this. In a daze, he placed a single bullet in the cylinder, and spun it. It took him another half hour to work up the nerve to place the gun under his chin. He took a breath, held it, and then slowly pulled the trigger.

Click.

Mirikon sat there, stunned for a moment, before letting the breath he held go. He’d only loaded one bullet. He’d only needed one, after all. But he hadn’t considered that spinning the cylinder might line an empty chamber up with the barrel. Now he had time to think, and he began having second thoughts. And third. And fourth. But he didn’t put the gun down, or move from the chair. Eventually, he pulled the trigger again.

Click.

Another empty. Now he was really getting desperate. He just wanted everything to be over. The fear, the guilt, the depression. Would the next pull give him release?

Click.

His hands barely able to hold the gun from trembling, Mirikon was about to just move the cylinder straight to the bullet, when he saw headlights in the window. Looking up at the clock, he realized it had been almost four hours since his family left for the theater, and now they were back!

Dropping the gun in a panic, mist swirled about him as the young man ran from his father’s study, and up to his room. He didn’t stop to think, just grabbed his leather jacket, a harmonica, and a beat up old leather hat, and ducked out his bedroom window, just like all those nights he’d snuck out of the house before. Only this time, he wasn’t trying to avoid curfew, but himself.

He ran. He didn’t know where he was going or how he would get there. He just ran, and the mist shrouded him as he went, hiding him from view. He just kept running, until finally, he found himself at the rail yard, staring at the freight trains being loaded, even this late at night.

Now that the panic had started to run its course, it shifted straight back into anger. Anger at himself for being what he was. Anger for not being able to do the deed. Anger for trying. Anger for running. Without thinking, he threw his fist through a plate glass window, and was rewarded with pain, as glass shards cut a long slash on his hand.

Pain! Pain cut through everything he was feeling and thinking, distracting him from his self-destructive feedback loop. And that allowed him to calm down, which stopped the mist surrounding him.

Pain? Pain could do this? That simple revelation brought a smile to the young man’s face. Pain would be his key. That would help keep him from losing control. Pain would make him stronger. Pain would make him safe.

And looking up at the moon that was just starting to wane from full, he laughed.