Canon Fodder

CHAPTER 362 MY MUTANT ACADEMIA

My name is Weston Walker. I grew up just outside of Chicago, Illinois. My parents and younger sister lived in a small home. My dad worked as a janitor and mom was a substitute teacher. After the plant my dad worked at shut down we struggled for a time, until he reached out to some old friend’s of his. Spotting him some money we were able to afford going across the country to start over. It was the summer before my senior year of high school so I wasn’t too happy about it, but I didn’t have much choice. Terrible in school, no job, I couldn’t stay behind.  

That was when the accident happened. Rather than stay at a hotel my dad drove through the night while we slept. I didn’t remember much of the accident since I was asleep. I came to hanging upside down in the back seat of the car. I had mind enough to unbuckle myself and drop to the roof. Trying to wake up my sister I looked around for help and noticed a barrel overturned next to the car. Printed on the side of the barrel was a symbol of a hexagon and a dot at the center. 

I was brought back to my task at hand quickly as dark blue ooze from the barrel began to pour out and leak toward me. My sister was only 12. I kept trying to force her seatbelt buckle open, not noticing the large glass shard embedded in her throat. That was where I was as the blue goo touched me. At first I felt nothing, but then an excruciating pain went through my body. Crying out, my body locked up and I fell in the ooze. I lost consciousness soon after that thanks to the pain that assailed me. 

I came to a week later. I was in a hospital in Philadelphia. My body covered in bandages, it took time to get answers. My family had all died in the crash. They never knew what hit them. This wasn’t the only troubling fact though. Apparently I was now a danger to everyone. 

Whatever had been in that blue goo had altered me on a cellular level. When a fireman pulled me out of the car he touched my skin. To his and everyone’s surprise our skin fused together. Where he touched my clothes was fine, but skin to skin had caused them to become one. The man’s fingertips had to be surgically removed from my forearm. 

The blue goo that I had been subjected to was gone by the time someone arrived. They were worried I was a mutant. One of those freaks that had supernatural powers like breathing fire, or shitting ice. I was secluded to a corner of the hospital and mostly ignored. That was when he came in. 

An older man with a shaved head, he was paralyzed and had to use a wheelchair. I had never seen him before. He explained to me about a school for special children. He called them gifted. I could go there and be with others that weren’t exactly normal. I was hesitant at first, but I had no other family to rely on or take care of me. Especially after it came out that I was a freak. 

The man offered to help me so I took it. Especially after he showed me his power to talk to people’s minds. His name was Charles Xavier, and he was the only reason I got out of bed. 

After paying for a lawyer the trucking company was promptly sued. They tried to settle quickly, and thanks to whatever Professor Xavier did he was able to assure me I got the maximum amount they were willing to settle for outside of court, $3 million. Otherwise it would have taken years to receive anything. 

The money was put into a trust for me. The school he offered was free and had it’s own boarding house so I could stay there, and my life was looking up. I couldn’t touch anyone, for risk of fusing to them, but I stopped worrying about that soon enough. 

The Xavier School for Gifted Children was just outside of New York City. The school was on top of a short cliff that overlooked the ocean. The school was like a skyscraper. Sleek black exterior with windows all around. About 20 stories tall it was way bigger than what was needed for a school. I was told by Xavier the size was for future growth.

Housing kids of all ages, they were all different, like me. The majority looked like normal people, but there were some that had abnormal deformities. One small girl had pink skin and short red horns on her head, another looked like a bird, beak and all, another boy had huge white feathered angel wings, and one had claws for hands. It was like being in a different world. 

School had just started and I was nervous of course. I wore clothes from neck to toe. Long sleeve shirt, black gloves, I tried not to show any skin. That was when I met Anne Marie. She too had a mutation where she couldn’t touch anyone. If she did she would drain them of their strength, and when she touched a fellow mutant she would steal their ability for a time. 

Anne and I hit it off like I never thought possible. Most everyone was hesitant to sit too close to us, so we took comfort in one another’s company. Unable to touch, we simply talked. Getting to know one another. She was the same age as me, and we shared most of our classes. It only took a week to ask her to be my girlfriend, and I was pretty stoked she agreed. Nothing really progressed past talking and spending time together. But we both hoped to learn to control our powers one day. Enough to not have to live in our own bubble. 

My life was slowly getting better. The ache from losing my family, and all I knew was fading. Not gone, far from it, but disappearing slowly and surely. I was content. 

Sitting in my room thinking about the possible future, that was when I noticed that a memory had faded. The face of my sister, simply gone. It had only been a couple of months since I had seen her last, but I couldn’t recall her face…or name. 

Panicking I sat up and to my surprise I was missing a lot of memories. My parents, where I grew up, they all began to fade away. Quickly they were replaced with similar but different faces. Memories flowed in and out of me as I began to panic. My life taking a new shape as I lost a little of each experience that added up to who I was. And with a simple twist my old life was gone, and only strange memories remained. 

—

I sat up in the bed. The room was dark but I could see it was pretty bare. The place didn’t look very lived in. I got off the bed and moved to the only door in the room. A hallway outside there were other doors lining each side of the wall. Wearing some sweats and a muscle shirt I walked down the hall barefoot. 

A bathroom at the end of the hall I felt like I was maybe in a detention center or something. No bars on doors. It was odd to have so many similar doors lining a wall. Once in the bathroom I hit the light to find showers, bathroom stalls, and urinals, not helping my detention center vibe. I walked up to a mirror and the memories began to flow in. 

I was Weston Walker. 17 years old, my parents and sister had died a few weeks ago. After a car accident I received shit powers and I was left all alone in the Marvel World. Luckily my local neighborhood psychic happened to hear about my issues and whisked me away to his school of mutantcraft and freakery. To my surprise, Mister Fuses to People, got a girlfriend. One of the main cast in Marvel, Anne Marie, aka Rogue. 

I was currently enrolled in the world’s equivalent of UA, or Hogwarts, or the University; depending on what coming of age school experience you preferred. Much like UA, super powers were shunned, unlike UA, you typically ended up dead if people found you had a power. 

Mutants could be a risk to themselves or other people. Most got their powers around puberty, like MHA you could get ones that changed your body, went unnoticed, or make you kill an entire city-worth of people if you weren’t careful. 

To be honest I was lucky I didn’t awaken with a power that caused me to emit radiation. Although it would help me with my Challenges, I doubted it would help me with my social life. Unsure how my fusion power worked, I decided to use something I had been saving for Marvel, my Weakness Eliminator. 

The Psychic Link was from One Punch Man. Nen Impurities was new though. I hadn’t seen it on me before but Hancock had it. I wondered if recently playing with Nen had helped me understand it better and cause impurities to appear. Spark Degradation was new, it could either mean my power was getting weaker or perhaps it became weaker the more I used it. Bond Drain was concerning, but I didn’t feel anything adverse so I focused on the last. 

Constant Fusion didn’t sound good. Clicking it I felt a part of my brain turn off. Almost like a switch. I called upon it again and the part of my brain turned back on. The superpower was like my Tremor Fruit and Spark. A part of me that was simply different. I would have to experiment with it later. 

I did try something I hadn’t in a while though. Grabbing my own hand they didn’t fuse together. Doubtful anyone else wanted to touch hands I left it alone and headed out of the bathroom. The hall was lined with other doors to other boy’s rooms that were my age. 

The first few floors of the school were living spaces, and the upper were classrooms. Unlike the Xavier School I was used to seeing in comics or movies, this one was more modern. Instead of a giant castle we got the more expensive version, which was fine with me. 

Heading down the hall I left the senior’s living quarters and moved to a lone computer in the communal hangout spot. Large couches and bean bag chairs like some tech start-up, Xavier had spent a pretty penny. After logging onto the computer I began to pour over information about heroes I knew of from the Marvel Universe. 

First was Tony Stark. He was a tech trillionaire that had his own social media platform, but had gotten his start in weapons. The year was currently 2010, but he still hadn’t made his Iron Man suit. More reclusive than the cinematic version of Iron Man, he was mostly in the background, but one of the richest people in the world. 

I quickly learned that I was in the early stages of the Marvel Universe. There was no news of Spiderman, Thor,  Black Panther, Dr. Strange, or anyone. I found an article on Bruce Banner and his experimentation with Gamma Rays, but he hadn’t turned into the Hulk yet. I had a blank slate. I could do…anything.

The school I attended was near New York City. My mind went to Spiderman of course. Bitten by a radioactive spider he received super powers from the incident. Able to sense danger, have fast reflexes, super strength, endurance, balance, so many cheats. I was tempted to try to steal his power. Then again I had read a few versions of Spider-man where the only reason he had been able to survive turning into the spider/man was because his dad was a famous scientist and had worked on the radioactive spider program. Peter’s blood was special because of it. So he didn’t die when he was bit. 

I did an internet search, and there was a Richard and Mary Parker that had died in a boating accident. Both had been scientists. Which made me hesitate to try to steal the Spiderman powers, at least before I got some rewards to help combat it, like more Weakness Eliminators.

There was a school website for Midtown High where a lot of the pictures loaded on the site were shot by a Peter Parker. I was able to confirm that Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane Watson, and a few others that went to his school in canon were still there. I wondered how I could manipulate things to maybe drop out of this school and attend that one, but decided to leave it for now as I continued my internet search.  

I looked up more information I knew of. SHIELD wasn’t a thing. And there was no information on Black Widow or Hawkeye, on social media or not. Since I was at the Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good, I looked up Magneto. He existed. Apparently described as an environmental terrorist, he had made his own island off the coast of the U.S. called Genosha. They didn’t specifically say he was a mutant, but it was implied. I wondered if Xavier fought his old boyfriend with the X-Men or not. 

Which was another surprising aspect of the world. There was no mention from Xavier or the news about the X-Men. The X-men was a group of men and women that were mutants and spent their time fighting Magneto and other threats to mutantkind. Because X-Men and Xavier were synonymous with one another I was positive they were real, but were still secret for now. If not I’d have to start them up…and change the name. X-Men was not a good team name. 

“Are you looking at porn?” Someone asked from down the hall. I looked up to see a very beautiful black woman with white hair. 

“Dammit, I didn’t even think about doing that,” I said sadly as I watched her approach. She was one of my teachers, Ororo Munroe. Her hair tied back in a ponytail she wore a loose fitting nightgown. “Why, offering alternatives?” I flashed her my best smile. She was older, probably early 20s, and stammered a reply as I turned off the computer. 

“Sorry about that, just checking emails,” I said. “I’ll head back to bed.” She walked over, trying to get a look at what I had been writing down. I threw the sheets in my spatial Inventory but as I turned to get up I knocked over the mouse. Reaching down she did the same and my bare hand bumped hers.

“Sorry,” I said again as she stiffened in shock. The woman had a spike of fear leak out at the contact, but then curiosity and wonder emitted from her. I realized I had forgotten not to touch people directly. I had only been at school a couple of weeks, but everyone knew not to touch me.

“H-how?” She asked, more than a little confused. 

“Oh right, my uh-Fusion thing. I figured it out, not really an issue anymore,” I admitted. 

“How?” 

“Just…figured it out,” I said with a shrug. “I can turn it off and on now.” 

“That’s impossible…or so Professor Xavier thought,” she said, amazed. I shrugged. 

“Guess he doesn’t know everything,” I said. Leaving her there in a stunned silence I went back to my room. I doubted anything much would come from it. Trying to play with my new Fusion super power as I thought about what to do in this new world I became excited for school the next day.