Mystique didn't answer. She'd been unnaturally quiet all day. Now, as we roared down the coastal road, her face was set in a grim expression.
Maybe she hadn't heard. Leaning closer, I bawled over the roaring, salty wind.
"MOTHER!"
"What?" Her tone was sharp and cold. I shrank back, feeling injured, and said, "nuthin'".
We leant into another corner and then ahead lay a mile of open road, running along the cliff edge until it entered the city I could see in the distance, a sprawling collection of buildings, their sandstone walls glowing golden in the rising sun's rays. The engine roared. The bike accelerated, a plume of vapour and thrown up water spreading out behind us.
A sign flicked by in an instant.
BAYVILLE 1/2 mile.
Bayville? Rang a bell. Hadn't mum mentioned that in before? Probably in one of her rants. Concentrating recalled the words 'school' and 'bald' and 'asshole'.
Wasn't Xavier's School there? The place with the self-hating mutants. Cool.
I spent the next half a mile happily cracking my knuckles.
The bike purred down the empty streets. The woman beneath my fingers was unknown to me, just a miscellaneous identity my mother had picked up somewhere. She was of late middle-age with an athletic build and long, pure-white hair. Her facial features were most likely South-African.
If she was changing that meant we were getting close. I felt eager to be on my first ever mission. Though I was fifteen and as much involved in mutant liberation as any of the proper acolytes, I'd always been kept from doing proper work by my protective parent.
Winding through the town I got the general impression she was heading higher up, inland. As we cleared the main part of the town I caught sight of a huge mansion, standing proud over the countryside below amongst its acres of grounds. A 20 foot wall surrounded it, which we skirted. Eventually, we reached a part where a convenient tree aided access.
The bike stopped and my mother turned to look at me, silently ordering me to get off. I climbed off and stood on the pavement. My heart was thudding.
"This is your first mission for the acolytes. Magneto wishes you to prove yourself through gaining undetected entry to the mansion and killing Charles Xavier. Don't fail."
And then she was gone.
I'm not sure which X-men category this belongs in. I've sortof built my knowledge from childhood memories of the old cartoon, the new cartoon, and the two films, so I apologise if they're a bit of a hodge podge of all of them.