Basically, this fic is an OC fic where I have replaced the canon X-Men with a team of all OCs, and we'll be (loosely) following the plot of the show, with my own tweaks to episodes.

Shout-Outs: Thanks to Ember Ice for creating Ava, A. Rog for creating Alex, Pokemon Trainer Leo for creating Kris, and out4thecout for creating Astoria. You guys are awesome!

Disclaimer (for the whole fic): I don't own X-Men: Evolution or any of its characters. All of the Original Characters presented here belong to their respective owners.

Strategy X:
Both Sides of the Spectrum

"Get him!" yelled a voice angrily. The sound of footsteps crunching heavily on the dead forest floor could be heard for what seemed like miles.

The boy high-tailed it out of there as quickly as possible. He ran, keeping his head held high to indicate that even this torture wasn't going to faze him. The vivid orange hair behind him was testament to the fact that his social life was forever changed.

"Damn," he muttered to himself, stepping into the cover of the trees. The setting sun would soon provide him some cover, assuming that his hair didn't glow in the dark. And that he could put some distance between him and his so-called "friends."

There was so much that he wished he could take back. He wished that he hadn't gone to the pool that day, half-sure that the water was what had caused the…change. It could have been some kind of freak lightning storm, or maybe static electricity. But the other half of him knew the truth.

He was different.

And there was no denying it.

He hurried along into the patch of thick trees, praying that it would be enough, when he felt the impact and the whole world blurred for what seemed like hours. He rubbed the back of his head lazily, trying to stop everything from spinning.

"Hit him again!" yelled another voice, a laughing assailant. There was something so twisted about someone who could take pleasure in this.

It was then that he remembered his "fight-or-flight" response was screeching to flee. He clambered backward again, his vision cluttered with swirls and splotches of green.

"Look at the idiot, you guys! He's running in circles, chasing his tail like a dog!" exclaimed the brutish Mark, one of his favorite people in the whole world. Well, when you factor out the psychotic rage.

Mark raised the bat at the others' requests, smacking it against the boy's back with a loud THUD. The boy groaned in pain, trying to ignore the shooting pain, and stood once more. Only to fall victim to the cruel metal of the bat against his kneecap.

"Why?" he moaned out, gasping for air that wouldn't come. He felt something stirring, something he couldn't name, and he prayed that his lunch wasn't coming back.

"Because," he accented the mark with a smash to the arm, "you," another hit to the back, "are," a slam to the stomach, "a freak!"

Suddenly, something burst within him and exploded outward in a burst of orange light. It arced through the air as quick as it had come, leaving behind sparks like the embers of a fire. The bully screeched when it made contact, but Mark wasn't hurt. In fact, it had done nothing but cause a distraction.

"No more magic tricks, Kris. This isn't like the day at the pool," he retorted, raising the bat once more. "This time, there's no element of surprise." Mark brought the bat down, and the boy silently prayed for mercy.

And it came. In the form of a burly man with blue-black hair, dressed in a brown leather jacket and jeans. "That's enough, kid. Drop the bat before I make ya," the newcomer half-barked, half-growled out.

It only took a mere moment to process the rage this man possessed, and even with the bat, Mark didn't want to face him. He and his buddies, Kris's former friends, ran from the area as quickly as they had come.

"You okay, kid?" asked the man as he knelt before him.

Kris was about to reply, but the trauma caught up to him, and he blacked out.

The burly man sighed, hoisting the boy onto his shoulders. "Figures. Now, how do I get him on my bike?"

"Touchdown!" yelled the group of cheerleaders, dressed in the school's colors of red and gold.

They really had the crowd going. Clapping and stomping along with their cheers and the school band, synchronized to the beat. All except for one girl, who watched the cheerleaders with disgust. She scowled at the head cheerleader, Crystal, and wondered how she could get away with frying her.

"Are you enjoying yourself, Ava?" asked the blond boy next to her, sitting down from his umpteenth trip to the concession stand.

"Are you enjoying your sixth hot dog, Alex?" mocked Ava in her best imitation of Alex's voice.

"Hey, I gotta keep my energy up!" he explained, grinning as he lifted his pointer finger and made it glow with faint green energy. Ava glared at him, warning him to put it away before someone could see. Alex only shrugged, did what she said, and shoveled the rest of the hotdog into his mouth.

"Well, I'll be surprised if those eating habits of yours don't slowly break Xavier's checkbook," Ava taunted, diverting her attention just as the star player Duncan Matthews scored a touchdown, bringing the score to forty-nine to seventeen, Bayville.

"What can I say?" Alex asked, shrugging as the rest of the crowd cheered. "I'm his favorite."

Ava grinned and shouted for the quarterback herself, but just as she was going to sit down, she noticed the head cheerleader and two of her cronies walking away from the sidelines.

"That's odd," she said, pointing them out to Alex. "As hard as it is for me to say this, Crystal isn't one to leave the sidelines like that."

Alex frowned, watching them head to the bleachers. "Oh, it's not something bad, Ava. They're probably just going to go and socialize or something. Isn't that what girls do?"

She locked eyes with him, daring him to dig a deeper hole for himself. The boy backed off, knowing what kind of temper she could have. Especially when it came to comparing her to common white trash like Crystal.

When the three cheerleaders headed under the bleachers, she turned back to Alex and gestured their way. "See! I'm checking this out. Are you coming?"

Alex considered it for a moment, looked toward the concession stand, and then back to her. "Nah, I'm going to stay here and watch the game."

Ava rolled her eyes, knowing him too well. "It's a wonder you aren't as big as a house."

The boy patted his lean stomach, feigning sadness. "I'm kind of insulted. Can't I at least be something cooler than a house? Like, an X-Mansion, complete with Danger Room and Cerebro and…"

She walked off, not giving him the satisfaction of laughing. He's lucky he's cute, she thought as she headed towards the cheerleaders.

"You really shouldn't smoke, you know?" said Crystal, pointing to the cigarette.

The girl that she and her friends were confronting was dressed to match her blue-highlighted, jet black hair, arranged in disorganized pig-tails. Despite her heavy black make-up and her spider-web tattoo, she was wearing a stylish black skirt and a black and blue blouse that exposed part of her pale mid-drift. Her knee-height black boots were almost the exact shade of her hair.

"Yeah, I understand the cancer issues, but thanks for updating me on what I already know. Do you have any other needless information that I don't give a shit to hear? Otherwise, I'll be just peachy if you'll leave me alone," the girl countered, a happy smile on her face as she puffed rings of smoke.

"Well, Astoria's grown a backbone," Crystal said, astounded that she had stood up to her.

"Actually, I always have had a backbone. But you've never spoken to me once aside from the useless insults about the way I look. I'll be honest, sweetie. You're not actually all that pretty."

Crystal was pissed. "Well, there was someone complaining about the smoke coming up from under the bleachers, so I thought I would put a stop to it."

"Who do you think you are, the Queen of England?" Astoria countered, puffing on her cigarette and exhaling through her nose. "You're not at the top, honey. In high school, maybe. But since when does high school matter? Thirty years from now, not a single one of us will look at you as though you have made something of yourself. I'll see you when you're washing my car."

Astoria smiled the cheeriest smile she could muster. Crystal countered with a death glare.

"Every single kid at this school looks up to me!" she exclaimed.

"I don't," said a voice. Crystal, the two lowly cheerleaders, and Astoria turned around and saw a girl with brown and pink hair standing in the shadows. "And I don't think Astoria does either. Why don't you go apply some more hairspray or something?"

Crystal scoffed. "Do you think I care if the pink-haired skank looks up to me or not? And I don't' use hairspray!"

Ava walked up to her calmly, but her eyes radiated anger and resentment for her last statement. "First of all, my hair is not pink. It's amaranth. Secondly, I'm pretty sure that if her cigarette got any closer to your hair, you would spontaneously combust. No joke. And thirdly, weren't you being 'passed around' from guy to guy last year for a cheap screw?"

Crystal and her friends were angry, but that was certainly an understatement. "Fine. If you want to play it that way," she began, pointing to the girls on her right. "Stomp out that cigarette. I'll handle the other one."

"Girl, you don't know who you are playing with," Ava said, grinning as Crystal came closer.

The other two girls headed toward Astoria, who merely sucked on her cigarette nonchalantly. It only took a second for the cloud of smoke to hit the oncoming girls in the face. They coughed it off and then grabbed the Goth by the arm, trying to grab the cigarette.

"You know, this is really smart. Let's grab a burning stick from somebody's hand," Astoria murmured. "You two don't have much brains without Queen Bitch over there, huh?" She pulled the now-angrier girls backwards, carefully stepping over the support beams. But the other two girls weren't so lucky. Both tripped over-excitedly, landing on the ground in a tangled heap of limbs.

Crystal, meanwhile, circled Ava carefully, trying to stop the coming altercation from happening. She had heard rumors about Ava's temper ever since she moved here, and she didn't really want to face that if she could help it.

"You know, I'm going to tarnish my reputation if I get involved in this," the head cheerleader commented.

"How, exactly, could your reputation get any worse?" Ava taunted.

The girl practically growled, running for her opponent's amaranth locks. She gave them a mighty tug, and Ava screeched.

"Fighting like a girl, huh?" yelled Ava, readying her fist and trying very hard not to explode into an electric fury. "That's okay. But just know, I can fight like a man." Ava slammed her shoulder against the cheerleader, knocking her to the ground. She was about to charge when she considered what Xavier would do. Probably try to peacefully solve the solution.

But, what the hell. She wasn't Xavier.

Ava hurled herself on Crystal and punched her once in the face, breaking her nose. Crystal looked up at her in terror, but Ava backed off after getting her good hit in. Crystal didn't follow, horrified that her nose would be irreparable.

But Ava hadn't been paying attention to the other half of the fight. Astoria's cigarette fell as Astoria was tackled, but as she hit the ground, a blue baseball-sized fireball shot from Astoria's hand and collided with the propane tank near the stadium gate.

Naturally, shrapnel and flames scattered throughout the stadium, and Ava ducked for cover. She was lucky that she was under the bleachers, but her thoughts suddenly jumped to Alex. Was he okay?

Astoria, singed in various places, got up from the unconscious cheerleaders' grasp. She looked toward Ava, who was hunkered down behind a bleacher support, and then ran from the area, knowing she was to blame.

Xavier was going to be so pissed.

How was it? Yes, no? Are any of the characters too Sue-ish/Stu-ish? Please, let me know what you think! I prefer a well-structured review with lots of constructive criticism than a review that says that you liked/hated my story, but the latter is fine too. And be honest, because seriously, I want to know what you think. Flames are welcome, if you just absolutely hated it.

I was going to include more, as I have the first two episodes written down on paper, but I thought this would be a good place to stop it. I'm not too pleased with the whole "fight-scene" if you can call it that. But it does get better. I promise, this will be very good, if I can balance the characters well and make them unique from the show.

And once again, REVIEW!