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Name: Unknown
Codename: John
Country of Origin: Unknown
Age: Unknown. appears to be in his early to mid 20
Power Explanation:
Unknown at this time
History:
John looked out through the scratched and dirty plastic window, his breath burning in his chest. The police lights were turned off, and the cars didn't seem to be following him into the shanty town. He looked down to his jacket, and the bullet hole piercing it, and frowns.
"What the fuck is going on?" he asks himself, softly.
"You on the run, that what happening," a raspy voice answers him, from behind.
John reacts purely by instinct, one hand diving under his jacket while he twists and drops to his side. His fingers close around air, and he hits the ground with an expelled breath, confused and a little frightened at his reaction.
Sitting in the back of the plywood and metal siding shack is an old woman, her face a grid of lines and wrinkles. Her mouth marks a thin line slashing beneath a thin aquiline nose, and yellowed eyebrows sag mournfully over wide and staring. They once might have been a bright blue, but they're now covered by a milky film. Her swollen fingers are playing with a rosary in her lap, and the regular clicking of the beads fill the silence.
She smiles at him, and he notices that most of her teeth are missing.
"I... I guess so," he manages to say, around the tightness in his throat. He pushes himself back up in a sitting position, taking his hand out from under his jacket and laying it on his lap.
"But you don't know," she croaked, her lips barely moving.
He shakes his head, then stops, realising eye eyes are focused on a spot about two feet over his left shoulder. He clears his throat, trying to loosen it.
"No, I... I don't." He opens his mouth, as if to continue, but he is unsure how to continue. The past hour is a blur, a sequence of images and sounds and smells, unfocused and jumbled in his mind. And, before that... Less than a blur. He contemplates the yawning blackness that stretches back in his memory, and shrinks from it, once more confused and frightened.
"We have a saying. When The People are in trouble, they go to the Institute." Her lips continue their slow crawl, and John realises she is somehow praying while they talk, her unspoken words as regular as the click of her beads.
He considers her words. There's only one place in New York they call The Institute, and that was the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, which was a Mutant school and sanctuary.
Which meant "The People" were mutants. His eyes widened.
"Oh no no no... I'm not a mutie. Fuck th-" He paused, and the sound of beads filled the empty spaces again.
His mind went back over the jumble of images and impressions from his escape from New Yorks finest. There were... Impressions. Feelings, vague and unfounded, of... Something. When his mind was approaching it, it slipped away, hidding behind flashes and smells, refusing to be pinned down. He was left only with a feeling of rightness, an echo through his thoughts that what she said made sense, was true, somehow.
Which only left the question...
"How do you know?" he finishes, aloud. He leaves, unspoken, the second half of the question. But the old woman laughed, rocking back on her hips, hey eyes never leaving that invisible spot on the wall.
"How does Granny Bishop know when you do not?" she finishes for him, between gales of laughter.
"I know, child, that is enough. That is why they come to me, here. Because I know. And now you go, child. The Man will not come here. Not at night, not on The Peoples land. Go and find yourself."
John sat there, unsure. He slowly got back to his feet, his eyes still on the folden, ancient thing in the back of the shed, and he opened his mouth again. But he saw that she was gone from him, rocking back and forth, lost in her prayers, in the regular click of the beads.
He opened the makeshift door, and stepped out into the sharp, soiled air of the shanty town.
Xaviers.
It was better than what he had before coming here.
Physical Description:
He stands almost six and a half feet tall, and his wiry build makes him seem even taller, and deathly thin. His head is topped by an unrully looking mop of dark black hair, shinning almost blue in the light. But his most arresting feature is his eyes; sharp, cold and icy blue, they seem to easily draw in the gaze.
In manner, and motion, he is best described as fluid. None of his movements seem wasted, or event effortful. When he moves, it is not so much transportation but simply being in a place that better suits him.
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