X-Men of Tomorrow
By Ben Church
The X-Men are the property of Marvel comics.
Mulder and Scully are owned by either Ten Thirteen
Productions or Fox. The Tomorrow People are owned by
Nickelodeon Studios. Flash, Shade, Max, and the Cat are
the intellectual spawns of none other than....TWIST!
Chapter 3
Westchester County, New York
April 15
12:10 p.m.
Flash returned almost instantly from his search.
"The Black Bird is still here. If they went on a
mission, they would have taken her wouldn't they?" he
asked with worried frown.
"Yes they would." Hotshot said. "But there's no
sign of a battle. I'm at a loss to explain it."
Somewhere
April 16
12:10 p.m.
The woman looked happily at her prizes. She'd
given the coordinates of the stasis chambers to the
Sentinel vocally, for she did not know the code that
would allow her to truly program this wonderful machine.
When she'd first met Gyric and his robot, she knew
that they were the key to capturing those teleporters.
A pity Gyric had gotten away.
She'd sent the Sentinel to capture the teleporters.
But not knowing the access code, or the specific
genetic structure of them, she'd instructed it to find
any humans who were genetically different from others.
And instead of the teleporters, she'd gotten these
interesting specimens. She wondered where in the world
the robot had found them.
"I'm going to have to get that access code from
Gyric if I want to program this Sentinel any more." she
thought. "I'll get to it right away."
Westchester County, New York
April 15
12:20 p.m.
Hotshot did one more scan of the grounds. He found
nothing new.
"Uhhhhh!" he groaned in frustration. "No signs of
struggle, no note, nothing! Has Shaw checked in yet?"
"No not yet." Shade answered.
Grounds of Xavier Institute
April 15
12:20 p.m.
Changeling sniffed at the ground. In order to
search more effectively, he'd changed into a dog, so he
could search for any scent of the X-men. Smell was much
more reliable than sight. He had found a familiar scent
and was following it while trying to identify it.
*You're not a dog.*
Changeling brought up his head and looked around in
surprise. There was no one there.
*Oh, yes there is. Look up here in the tree.*
Changeling glanced up. Sitting in the tree above him
was a black cat.
"What the hell?" he thought. "That's a cat. A
telepathic cat. I think I'm losing my mind."
*No, you're right. I'm a telepathic...Look, my
idiot brother turned me into a cat O.K.?*
"Okay." Changeling still wasn't sure what to make
of it, but he had more important things on his mind. He
returned to his search. *What brings you to these
parts?* he thought.
*I was hoping that the X-Men could help turn me
back.*
*Well no such luck at the moment. The X-Men are
currently M.I.A.*
*Mind if I help you look?*
*Not at all.* Suddenly, he recognized the scent.
"Sentinels!" The situation was very serious indeed.
"But how could Sentinels have captured all the X-Men
without a fight?" The cat leaped onto his back.
*Yeeow! watch it with them claws will you?*
*Sorry.* Changeling and the cat continued on the
trail, and disappeared into thin air.
War Room
12:21 p.m.
"Well where the hell is Shaw?" Hotshot said
irritably. Everyone else had reported in but him.
"Cerebro, where is Daron Shaw."
"Designate: Shaw, Daron- is no longer on the
grounds."
"The hell? Cerebro when did Shaw leave the
grounds?"
"30 seconds ago."
"Okay, where did he exit the grounds?"
"Designate: Shaw, Daron- did not pass the
perimeter."
Hotshot's personal lightbulb flickered on.
"Cerebro scan for any and all anomalous readings."
"One anomalous reading detected."
"Can you identify the anomaly?"
"Scans indicate the anomaly is a distortion in the
space time continuum."
"Bingo." Hotshot said triumphantly. "Why do I feel
like I'm in an episode of Star Trek?"
Washington DC
April 16
1:00 p.m.
Mulder held the file on Marmaduke in one hand and
the phone in the other. It was time to get to the
bottom of this. The phone rang twice before someone
picked up.
"Hello?" Bill said.
"Hello Mr. Damon."
"Oh, hello Mulder."
Mulder had thought long and hard about how to
broach the subject of Bill's son.
"I know about your son Bill." In retrospect,
perhaps he should have thought about it longer.
Bill took a deep breath. "Is that a threat
Mulder?"
"What?"
"Get this strait Mulder, if anything happens to my
son or his friends, you, Scully, and Mr. Gyric will
disappear. And it won't be of your own violation." He
hung up.
"Damn. Blew it." Mulder's thoughts were
interrupted by Scully's arrival.
"Mulder look at this." she said, and handed him a
newspaper clipping.
"What's this?" he asked and glanced at the
headlines.
"Giant Robot Threatens Downtown!" Mulder smiled.
"You're showing me a headline from an Australian Tabloid
Scully? Is this some kind of joke about my character?"
"The paper is the most respected in Sydney
Australia. Saying it's a tabloid is like saying the
Washington Post is a tabloid."
"Okay, so someone's making giant robots to fight
Godzilla. Under normal circumstances, I'd be really
excited about this Scully. But what does this have to
do with our case?"
"Look at the boy in the foreground of the picture."
She handed him a blown up picture of the boy. Mulder
stared, the boy was Adam. The first boy to disappear.
He'd returned.
"This case just got a hell of a lot more
interesting." Mulder said.
To be continued...