DISCLAIMER: The characters in this story are mine, though they live in Marvel's universe.

CHALLENGE: Kaylee-Jaya's "faces of hate" challenge, wherein she wanted to see stories about hate, but not in the "get the mutie!" format. My humble attempt follows.

ARCHIVE: Usual rules: if you have been given carte blanche by Indigo, archive ahead -- otherwise, please be so kind as to ask first.

FEEDBACK: Welcomed and appreciated at indigo@spork.com. Anything you have to say, as long as it's polite -- in other words, no flames.

PERMISSIONS: This story is okay to be reproduced as a POP UP FANFIC, but not as an MST.

THANKS: to Matt Nute, Ramiel, Twiller and Azzy for betaing.

All around him was silence. Except for their breathing. He could hear them breathing.

"I bet you're wondering why we've asked you here," said a male voice, softly, ironic humor tinging the words.

"It...had occurred to me," Gordon admitted through his teeth. He wasn't tied down. He wasn't drugged. But nonetheless, he was a prisoner and he knew it. He couldn't see his bonds, but they were there -- invisible, just beyond his skin, ready to tighten should he show the slightest inclination to bolt. He had no idea who his captors were. He hadn't seen them. Not since he had been caught alone, waiting for the 11:45 bus back to Scranton.

He hadn't even been taken violently. He'd gotten sort of sleepy, sort of drowsy, and he'd closed his eyes for one second...

...and awakened here.

Wherever here was.

"Well, that's something," said a female voice, one clearly full of disdain. "Why do you think we brought you here?"

"I don't kno--" Gordon began, then blinked down as his denim jacket was forced open, and the Friends of Humanity badge pulled from the inner breast pocket. "Oh." He permitted himself a humorless smile. "Well that'd explain the reason I got kidnapped by a bunch of muties, huh?"

"Actually," the male voice again, "we just had some questions to ask you."

"Questions?" Gordon looked dubious. "What kind of questions...?"

"Why do you hate muties?" A different female voice.

"Easy. They're dangerous. They spread disease," Gordon answered with all the arrogant self-assurance of his seventeen years.

"Disease. Okay, so, mutants spread what -- chicken pox, mumps, measles, diptheria?" The male voice again. "Mosquitoes spread malaria. There are vaccines. Tsetse flies spread narcolepsy. There are vaccines. And, until they realized what they were doing, good Christian missionaries spread disease when they visited foreign countries.

"Columbus spread diseases to the natives when he first got off his ship. Would you hate the missionaries for bringing diseases along with the word of God? Would you hate Columbus for discovering he accidentally infected the natives of this land in the process of discovering America?"

Gordon was silent a moment, then snapped back, "They had no way of knowing! There's no cure for the mutie disease! Besides, muties know what they do! They use their powers to scare decent people, or take jobs that should rightfully be ours!"

"Uh huh," drawled the first female voice. "They said the same thing about the Japanese when they came here. They were put in internment camps during World War II out of irrational fear. When all they were trying to do was make their way in the world."

"They said the same thing about the Mexicans, who go through hell to get out of squalor and make a better life for themselves here in the USA," added the second.

"Ryan Jones, the mutant boy whose family the Friends of Humanity ran out of town...what was his crime?" asked a new male voice. "Did he infect someone with Legacy? Did he steal someone's job? Did he use his dangerous powers to scare you? Or one of your compatriots?"

Gordon lifted his chin, and was silent.

"Speak up," said a new voice. "Tell us what his crime was. Tell us what the bad, bad mutie did to deserve his tires slashed, his home vandalized, his lawn set afire?"

"The others -- they said he was dangerous."

"You know what Ryan's mutation is? What his awesome and deadly power, that normal folks should fear is?" Rage was building in the voices as they circled around Gordon in the dark.

"No..." Gordon admitted, dropping his gaze. Something unseen forced his chin back up.

"You wanna know what his mutation is?"

Gordon didn't get a chance to answer. "We're gonna tell you anyway. Ryan Jones is a purifier. He breathes in the halitosis of the city -- carbon monoxide and factory fumes, and he breathes out clean oxygen. Give him stagnant water to drink, and he'll piss pure water. Let him in the sun, and his green hair photosynthesizes. He's the cure for a tiny fraction of a dying world."

"AND YOU. RAN. HIM. OUT. OF. TOWN!" The chorus was amplified, thunderous. Gordon winced.

Gordon widened his eyes. "Oh," he said, softly. "Well, how was I to know?!"

"You could have asked. Green hair doesn't mean he fires death rays out his ass."

"What are you gonna do to me?" Gordon asked.

"We could do what you and your FOH cronies did to Ryan..." a male voice said softly. "Run you out of town."

"Hey, I have a right to be here!" Gordon piped up, indignantly.

"Yep, so did Ryan Jones." A flat 'plap' sounded at Gordon's feet. "That's his report card. A's and B's. Grades that'll get him into a good college, so it doesn't matter that you ran him out of Scranton. He'll do okay anyway."

Another papery impact. "His resume. Yeah, he's only 17 and he has a resume. Worked as a Candy Striper because his mutant metabolism could safely dispose of the dangerous biological wastes. No police record, though. And if he was gonna be dangerous, well, he could've poked people with AIDS needles instead of eating them."

One more folder hit the floor. "Xerox of his birth certificate. Look. He was born in Philadelphia. An American citizen. With the same rights as you have as an American citizen, Gordo."

Gordon's head snapped up from the floor at that nickname. ~Only one person calls me Gordo...~ he thought, feeling a lump in his throat. "Herbert?"

A light clicked on somewhere in the darkness, illuminating a silhouette. The man in the shadows stepped forward and revealed himself to be Herbert Stuart -- Gordon's cousin. "Yeah, cuz. Me."

Herbert was an intern at Scranton Medical Center, and he wore his white lab coat over a T-shirt and jeans. "My Hippocratic oath says do no harm, and act to ease suffering. This is just part of the job."

Gordon curled his lip. "Part of the job is terrorizing kids, Herbert? Part of the job is hanging out with muties and mutie-lovers?"

"How do you know I'm not a mutie myself, cuz?" Herbert demanded. "Just because I don't look like one, doesn't mean I'm not.

"After all -- you don't look like a pigheaded, bigoted asswipe, but you are."

"And I don't look like a mutant, but I am," piped in a female voice. A light flicked on elsewhere in the room. The shadowy figure that stepped into the spotlight this time was a girl with golden-blonde hair and lively blue eyes. Her button nose was over perfectly heart-shaped lips. A Scranton High sweater was pulled taut over her lush teenage figure, and her long legs depended from beneath the miniskirt.

Gordon felt his breath catch in his throat. "Tiffany?!"

"Uh huh," Tiffany replied, smiling coyly. "Wanna see my mutation?" She pulled the headband from around her cascade of blonde curls, then turned and pulled her hair up off the nape of her neck. Her head was shaved underneath, from ear to ear. A pair of gorgeous blue eyes blinked intently at Gordon. She heard him make a gagging noise, then turned around. "Guess you wanna break up with me, now, huh?"

"It's a trick! It's a mutie mindgame!" Gordon shouted, throwing his head back and squeezing his eyes shut.

Tiffany replaced her headband. "Hardly. Your own mind plays enough games for us all." She snapped her fingers and another light came on. And another. And another.

Gordon found himself turned to and fro by the invisible hands as each figure stepped forward. Cops, in their uniforms. Firefighters. The home-ec teacher he had the crush on in seventh grade. His father's mechanic. The token clerk at the subway station he passed. The lifeguard who'd saved him in fifth grade when he swam out too far at the lake.

"I'm a hemophiliac," said one person.

"I'm an albino," said another.

"I've got sickle cell anemia," said a third person.

"I have Marfan's syndrome," announced a particularly tall person in the back.

"We're ALL MUTANTS!" they chorused proudly.

"Gonna hate us all?" Tiffany asked.

"Going to hate yourself?" asked another voice, much softer and older than the others. "Going to hate me?"

The rest of the overhead lights came on, flooding the entire warehouse in light. The throng of people surrounding Gordon Stuart parted, and allowed the speaker to approach their interrogated prisoner.

Tiny, halting steps in triads indicated the person walked with a cane. As she stepped further into the light, her shoes and support hose became visible. Then the elegant dress, the wizened, but still-pretty old face. The dancing blue eyes, all topped up by a downy crown of still-thick silver hair.

"Grandma?!" Gordon croaked, tears coming to his eyes.

"You can't go back to the Friends of Humanity, Gordie," Myrtle Stuart told her grandson, leaning on her cane.

"Grandma, I can't believe you'd be part of this to scare me. You either, Herbert!" Gordon struggled against his unseen bonds.

"You mistake our reasons," Tiffany said. "You were fine with a good number of the people here until you found out we are mutants. 'Course, not all of us are -- can you pick out which of us are and which are just plain people like you?"

Gordon glanced around the circle of faces, and shrugged, helplessly.

"That's the point, Gordo," Herbert said. "Gramma, better tell him the real reason we got him here."

Myrtle nodded benevolently. "The truth is, we did this for your own protection, Gordie. I may not look like one of your newfangled 'muties' but I am. I can see the future. It's called precognition. I knew my husband, your grandpa Joe, the moment I met him. I knew we'd have five kids. I knew they'd all marry and have kids of their own. And I knew the mutations would carry down the family line -- and change as they went along.

"I saw two days ago that you're a mutant too, Gordie. And your mutation will be a bit more obvious than mine, or young Tiffany's. Hardly suitable for you to continue running with those Friends of Humanity hooligans. Honestly, I thought your mother raised you better."

Gordon bit his lip. "M-me? A mutie?"

The invisible bonds holding Gordon vanished. "Yep," said one of the crowd. "And you'll have us to talk to -- other mutants, or people who don't care whether you're mutant, rich, poor, black, white, whatever. Because your 'Friends' won't be anymore once you no longer look like their idea of Humanity."

Herbert placed his hand on Myrtle's shoulder as Gordon leapt up and bolted for the door, fighting back tears of anger, fear, and humiliation. "You think we got through to him?" he asked his great aunt as Gordon's footsteps receded into the night.

"Doubt it," Tiffany sighed. "He's smart, but he's stubborn. He may have to have the truth smack him in the head before he believes."

"Yeah, well, we did what we could to scare him straight," said a young man with red hair. He rubbed tiredly at his eyes. "Telekinetically holding him in place so he'd sit and listen without hurting him was rougher than I thought."

"We appreciate it, Patrick," Myrtle said, kissing the young man on the forehead. "Go on home and take some Tylenol. As for the rest of us -- we'll be back here tomorrow. A runaway will be getting off the bus from New York City -- and her mutation is about to manifest."

Gordon Stuart sat under the eagle banner standard of the Friends of Humanity and smiled smugly. He'd gone right to the chapter leader and told him he'd been held against his will by muties, but that he'd been brave and not told them anything. This ceremony was to promote him from corporal to lieutenant in the FOH Hierarchy.

He wore his best suit; the one he'd worn to the junior prom. He'd had it dry cleaned and pressed. He was wearing one of his father's crisp white shirts, and his best black wing-tips. The only thing he wasn't wearing was the half-mizrah coin Tiffany had given him. He hadn't been able to bring himself to wear it since that night. Tiffany had been right. It had been an effort to speak to her at school...and he hadn't been able to call her either. It was over.

He tore his thoughts away from such ponderings, as the Aryan-handsome Captain of the chapter approached. Straightening proudly, he remembered to remove his sunglasses.

"Gordon Stuart, we--" began Eric Boomhauer. But he didn't continue. Instead the golden cup he had been about to hand Gordon fell to the floor, splashing wine onto both their shoes. After a moment, Eric found his voice again, and asked through clenched teeth, "Is this some kind of JOKE, Stuart?!"

"I don't know what you mean, sir," Gordon said to the older man. He turned to look out at the rest of the chapter, who all gasped and began murmuring darkly to each other. Gordon blinked, and frowned, uncertain what was causing the reaction.

"His eyes..." he heard someone murmur.

He hopped down from the dais, and ran for the men's room. The rest of the chapter members were only too happy to get out of his way.

Gordon ran up to the sink and looked in the mirror --

...and found a pair of large, glassy, black, insectoid compound eyes -- like the eyes of a fly -- staring back at him. His eyes had been sensitive and achy for the past few days -- he'd chalked it all up to studying and too little sleep. His vision had been doubled and tripled. He had just figured he needed glasses. His eyes had been fine when he left the house.

Gordon froze, turning toward the bathroom door.

The voices outside sounded angry.

"I am a mutie..." Gordon whispered, as the first insistant knocks on the door began.

Story ©2001 by the author. This story is protected by the TCP
Warehouse. Do not archive or MST without the author's direct permission.