Disclaimer: I do not own any of the X-Men movies, or any of the characters contained therein.
Summary: See Previous Chapters

CHAPTER TWO

So far, all of the mutants that Charles and Erik had come across had been young adults, or at the very least, teenagers.

Therefore, it had been quite a surprise when a little girl, probably not more than three or four years of age, stepped out of the shadows of a bush (where Charles could swear she hadn't been a second ago) like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, and clearly said, "Blast".

Erik somehow managed to bite back a significantly stronger remark, and hide his amusement at the usually unflappable Charles staring in open-mouthed shock. "Who…how did you get here?"

The girl gave a wicked little giggle, which Charles recognized as the same one Raven had used countless times, right before getting into mischief. "I just did."

Erik was even more amused when Charles actually spluttered. It must be killing the young professor that the girl had neatly road-blocked such an intriguing mystery. "Can you tell us your name? What made you come here?"

The girl giggled again, but elaborated. "The other kids were teasing me about being 'leptic. I wanted to go somewhere that I wouldn't be teased for being different." She paused, tilting her small head. "Is it really only a joke if people call you a demon?"

Raven, who had spent her time at university studying languages, snarled something very impolite in Swahili. "No, it isn't. And why would anyone call a sweet little thing like you a monster?"

The little girl huffed, clearly pleased at the idea of back-up. "Because they're idiots." She sighed. "And because I can do this."

Suddenly, the shadows around them seemed to explode, and the little girl was surrounded by what looked very much like the manifestation of a child's ideas of a monster in the closet. The girl herself had also changed, features fading as she seemed to be made of pure shadow herself, and her figure had changed, becoming almost skeletal, with four arms and the head of a raptor. "Daddy told Mummy that trying to find me during hide-and-seek was like chasing shadows, and I wanted to try chasing shadows, and then this happened, and my aunt and uncle and cousins said that I was a demon."

Perhaps this made sense to a three-year-old, but not so much to an adult. Charles and Erik stared and tried to work through such a thought process. Raven, with a life-long knowledge of how people reacted to the physically strange, promptly melted, pulling the child into her arms.

Pulling themselves together, Erik and Charles exchanged glances. Neither had much experience with children and any books that they could find on the subject were likely to be thrown off by the fact that no author had yet taken into account the possibility of a mutation. They jumped again when what looked like a 3-D shadow puppet danced past them, and an opaque shield prevented Charles's dropped mug from showering everyone with hot tea.

To the little girl, however, this seemed perfectly normal, which spoke volumes about the adaptability of a child's mind, and begged the question of how long she had possessed her mutation, to have such control. Also, how long she could have had it, given her limited amount of time on Earth.

If Raven thought that it was odd, she said nothing, whispering to the girl she still held. Clearly manipulating the puppet by waving one hand like a conductor, the girl giggled again and gave the two men a careful look. Abruptly, the shadow puppet looked very much like Charles, and a wisp of darkness separated itself from the shadow of a nearby bookcase, tugging it slightly, swirling into a wonderful likeness of Erik.

Being a child himself when he had been taken to the camps, and when he first discovered his own mutation, Erik had a vague idea of how to deal with jumpy children. Not much, but a little better than Charles. "That's a wonderful gift you have. Do you know how you came here? And what is your name."

The little girl beamed at him, wriggling out of Raven's arms. "My sister called me the Shadow Lady, but my name is Natalia Ross. I thought that since everyone looks up to the same sun and the sun casts a shadow, and shadows are everywhere, it should be easy to move from one shadow to another, right?"

It took everything Charles had not to cringe. Or possibly whimper and hide under a table. However inappropriate, the phrase "It's not the size that counts, but how you use it" came to mind. No one had really studied the less-known mutant powers, or even the more common ones, in any real depth, so how much a mutant could do, and the ratio of belief to willpower, was unknown. Too young to really know what was possible and what wasn't, and with mutations often becoming stronger through trial, error and practice, there was no telling what a child could do, just because they thought they could.

The child had only been with them for five minutes, and Charles was already getting a headache.

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A/N: I know some people are going to shout "Mary-Sue!", but think about it. I know a pair of twins that were so identical that their own parents couldn't tell them apart, and if you showed them a photo of their younger selves, they'd usually get it wrong. The only person who never once had this problem was their younger sister, who (by her admission) could tell them apart purely because no one had told her that it should have been bloody impossible. No one told me that three-year-olds don't belong in the YA section of a bookstore, so I picked the book with the prettiest cover and got through four chapters before I had to go and ask Dad what 'incredulous' meant. You saw what Jean was capable of as a child in X3, and Magneto's raw power in the camps, because they wanted it to happen.

A powerful child who probably can't even write 'limitations', let alone know the meaning, is going to be able to do a lot, just because they don't know better.

Like it or hate it, tell me what you think.

Thanks, Nat.