#16 February 2009

"John Proudstar, get off the airplane, before its too late!!" Charles Xavier screams at the top of his lungs over the roar of the screeching jetliner.

The scene is above the Colorado Rockies, right outside of Cheyenne Mountain. The X-men had come in the answer to the treats of an internationally known terrorist, Count Nefaria. After defeating the Count's Animen, a group of super powered mutants, and disarming the Doomsmith System, a device that would let loose all of the country's nuclear missiles all at once, the mutant super heroes chased after the escaping Count Nefaria. Thunderbird, John Proudstar, who saw the Count, climbed aboard the aircraft that he was on and flew to the sky above. The rest of the X-men, minus Sean Cassidy, the ever-chipper Banshee, stayed outside the mountain, watching the terrorist flee, with Thunderbird aboard. Banshee felt it his duty to stop both enemy and friend.

The angry Apache punched his way through the cockpit of the jet and grabbed a hold of the Count.

"You madman--!" the terrorist cried for dear life. "You'll kill us both!!"

The telepathic voice of Charles Xavier, the X-men's mentor, rang in the Indian's head. "Butt out, baldy," was Proudstar's response. "I'm through takin' orders--!" With a final punch, Thunderbird shattered the entire cockpit and pulled Nefaria into the open air. "I've been a loner all my life, Xavier-- an outcast-- dumped on by everybody I met-- but I'm a man, Xavier, a warrior of the apache-- an' today I'm gonna prove it!!"

The Banshee screamed one last time, as the plane flew further and further from his reach.

And then, all at once, the plane caught fire and started to descend even more than before. With one final blast, it exploded. And when it finally hit the ground with life-defying impact, the X-men cried. Xavier cried at the top of his lungs and felt Proudstar's pain in his mind. He knew every one of his last thoughts and dreams.

Sometime later, the mutant super-heroes left the scene of the crime.

That deadly event happened in 1978. That was then, this is now. Things have changed. Now it is 1989 and the scene is way much different than then. The noise from the fire has subsided. The plane is almost burnt to a crisp. And the bodies are not even present.

And now, unlike then, two reporters with cameras take pictures of the hardly visible wreckage. The one is from the New York Times, called Ben James, the other from the Daily Post, Greg Hart. They are both professionals in their jobs, and do their best when on call.

Ben snaps a picture of the shattered cockpit. "It's amazing, ain't it, Greg," he says to his partner in journalism, "how the plane could have stayed almost intact after all these years?!"

"Not that much different how we could have found it in the Rockies, eh?" Greg smiles. "So, are we going to investigate the craft, or not?"

Ben realizes his friend's meaning, right from the beginning. "Sure, why not?"

They slowly ride down the mini hill, not noticing the man, all in animal skins, Native American by the color of his red skin, following them, not more than a few feet behind. He has no weapons on him, but he sure is fierce looking. The man is a born tracker and has found his quarry.

In seconds, the two reporters reach the wrecked plane and approach the half-opened door. Smoke flows from the hinges and by the looks of it, it is extrememly hot. They, knowing full well the effects of a explosion in the air, do not even move towards it, or try to open it completely. They are not stupid.

"What do we do, now, smart boy?" Ben asks his partner.

"How am I supposed to know, jerk? I'm not exactly Einstein, y'know." He impatiently looks around the smoking craft for any kind of an answer. "Take some more pictures, what else!!"

"Well, you're the boss, I guess."

The Native American tracker comes ever closer to the two of them. He is mere inches behind them. The kill is on. He loves the thrill of the hunt.

Ben lifts his camera to his face and starts to focus. "Well, say cheese, jet."

And then, with one swift movement, Ben is kicked in the face. He is forced to drop his camera, as he tumbles to the cold ground. He looks to see the tracker-man.

"Wh-- who are you, man?!" Ben panicks, when his attacker edges to him.

"I've come to kill you," the man says, as his thick hands wrap around Ben's throat. "As the saying goes, prepare to die!" With another swift movement, the man robs the life from Ben's body, as his choke-hold smashes his windpipe. In seconds, he is dead.

The man gets up, pivots and faces the other reporter.

"Give up, resistance is futile!"

Greg starts to snap pictures with his camera. "Oh, this is great! Beastman kills reporter. You don't know the kind of headlines you'll be making, pal!"

"Shut up!" The tracker-man swings his leg up and kicks Greg in the neck, crushing it. The man falls to the ground, like his partner before him, dead.

Paying no attention to the extreme heat, the Indian fully opens the door. Instantly his hands form blisters to the pain that he experiences, but he ignores it. The only thing that he can concentrate on is the sight before him. The cockpit is a wretched charnel pit, glass everywhere, and a human body in the pilot's seat. It has been lying there for a long time, decaying for about eleven years.

The body belongs to the late Count Nefaria. He died at an early age and all that is left of him is his blackened bones. It is a disgusting sight, but the Indian does not mind. He doesn't even flinch when he first sees the body.

"Nice to see you, Nefaria," he says to the body, as if it were still alive. "You probably don't remember me. But I sure know you. You are one guy that is hard to forget." He looks at the cheetah's skin around his neck. It feels nice and comfy. "I brought you a present. Hope you like it?" He carefully takes it off of his body and places it gently on the Count's corpse. "Think of it as a house-warming gift."

The body seems to almost stare at him, when the skin is placed on it. And if he was still alive, he would see a man the world believes to be dead. This man was an apache, a man and a mutant. The name he received at birth was John Proudstar, but he prefers the codename Thunderbird!

The head of the body cocks backwards when Proudstar punches it. "You were really stupid, y'know that, Neffie-baby? You never knew-- or even realized-- that I survived the explosion. It was an easy thing for me to drop to the ground at the last instant. You didn't think that I was going to go down with you, now, did you? I may have been careless and cocky, but one thing that I wasn't was dumb. You just misjudged me, like everyone misjudged me. My parents, my brother, the X-men, everyone. But the person that misjudged me the most was One-eye, Cyclops, ol' Scott Summers." He nods his head, as in hearing some kind of reply from the body.

"Yes, of course. He always thought that I was weak, not strong, not good enough for his mutant freak team. But I was better than him, and even Wolverine. Hard to believe, ain't it? Yeh, Logan's supposed to be the best there is at what he does. What a crock." He nods again.

"Yes, you're right. And that's why I had to leave them. Why I didn't reveal to them that I wasn't alive for all those years. I had to search for myself. To find who I was and why I was granted these gifts-- though some absentminded people would call them curses. I know a little more about myself, and I'm ready to face the world, I think."

He steps out of the cockpit and approaches the two dead bodies. "Yep. I can certainly say that I am now more better off than I was before."

And then, he walks off into the cold, menacing mountains before him.

Several hours later, day gives way to night, and a jeep pulls onto Graymalkin Lane in Salem Center, just outside the city of New York. It is an old jeep, probably made in the '70s. It only has one occupant, a Native American, clothed in a t-shirt and jeans. His boots are old and the bandana on his forehead absorbs the sweat pouring down his face. He can barely live through the heatwave, the aftermath of the continual destruction of the Earth's cosmic ozone layer.

The jeep comes to a stop and John Proudstar gets out of it. The sight before him is as sad as it is terrifying. This used to be a mansion, which was Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Now, it is a wrecked monstrosity, like the plane in Colorado, destroyed by a madman. In this case, it was devastated by someone called Mister Sinister. He's dead, now, and so is the mansion.

Well, well, well, Thunderbird thinks to himself. How quickly things change in this world. I remember when this place was big and sprawling. Now it is nothing but a blasted wreckage. This is where I first met the X-men, that's when my problems fully began." He stares at his feet, in pity. "After I came out of my hermitage, I felt that I had to go see the plane and Nefaria, again. It was a piece of my past that had to be resolved. So, is this. I thought seeing the mansion, maybe not the X-men themselves would help me sort things out. No such luck. My old team is dead, along with their headquarters/home.

"Why can't things be easy?!" he yells, switching to normal speech.

"That's the way life is, bub," a voice cries out. "Too bad you can't do anything about it."

Proudstar turns around to see a man sitting on a perch of the wreckage. He is a blond, has a weird shaped face, claws, and has some kind of a orange and white costume on. He's a mutant, most likely.

"Who are you?" John asks.

"Why," he says, licking his claws, "I'm called Sabertooth by some, foul names by others. And I'm here to see you."

"Why are you here?! Did my family send you?"

"'Course not. Your parents are still in Arizona and your brother's in Massachusetts with Emma Frost."

"Frost?! Isn't she in the Hellfire Club? Y'know, that group of mutants that want to rule the world and thinks the social club is a means to obtaining that goal."

"Yup, on both accounts." He licks his claws, again. "The reason I'm here is, that my boss sent me."

"Your boss?! And who's he?"

"None of your flaming business. He just wants you dead. And I'm a man who always fulfills his job."

"Oh, really?" Thunderbird gets into a ready fighting stance.

"An' if you think that your funky Injun hocus-pocus can help you, you're flamin' mistaken!" Like a blur, Sabertooth charges and slashes his claws at Proudstar's shirt, tearing most of it into little pieces.

Thunderbird screams out in pain and buckles back. "That-- hurt!!" Who is this character? he muses. No matter, he just has to fight him, so that he doesn't hurt him, again.

"In a fight, bub, you have to expect a little pain." Sabertooth gets ready to parry back, but his opponent kicks him in the chest as hard as he can. Sabertooth falls down on some metal debris. "You are sure tough, but not tough enough to finish me."

"Wanna bet?!" With a single swing, Thunderbird strikes his golden haired enemy in the jaw. He hears the crackling of it, and sees even worse. At first, Sabertooth bleeds, but in a split second, that trickle of blood just disappears. "What the hell happened?"

"Oh, you probably never heard of m' healin' factor," he laughs. "It allows me to heal any wound formed faster than any human. Wolverine has the same thing. That's why he can't be beat."

As Sabertooth slashes his claws forward, Thunderbird realizes that if Wolverine didn't have this healing factor, he could probably beat me in the things that he lost in the past. This increases his ego even more. But back to business. He ducks his enemy's claws, just in time.

"You're fast," Sabertooth says, "but not fast enough." And then, with one final strike, Sabertooth tears at the Indian's flesh. Blood sprays all over John's face.

His scream of pain can only be echoed by his enemy's laugh. Gripping his injured face, he falls to the wrecked mansion.
John cannot believe that he has been hurt so much. He begins to cry, but thinks that Sabre could attack any moment now. He looks up and just sees him laughing his head off. His face goes into his hands again and he continues to cry.

A hand taps him on the shoulder. He looks up, his face still as bloody as ever. It is a woman, a beautiful one at that, who doesn't seem to mind his tears. Her voice says, "Having fun, Johnny? 'Cause with me, I can always turn your stomach upside-down."

Then, the woman picks him up and kisses him softly on the lips. At first, he seems to enjoy it, but nausea floods his body. His stomach folds in and of itself. He feels like he is going to vomit any second now. Quickly, he slaps her, releasing her weird hold on him. He then bends over, but he doesn't vomit. He feels sick to the bone, but he won't release it. It must be an illusion, then.

"You like Vertigo, honey?" she asks him.

He gets up. "Yes." He strikes her. Since she doesn't have a healing factor like Sabertooth, who is still laughing, she falls unconscious almost immediately.

Then, a metal object of some sort pokes at John's neck. His eyes turn about and sees that it is a sub-machine gun and who is holding it. It is a rough man, with long black hair with an equally black moustache, wearing metallic armor covering his entire body minus his upper chest and face.

"Name's Scalphunter, an' our motto-- y'see we're called the Marauders-- is that the only good mutie is a dead mutie," the man explains.

There is a gunshot and Thunderbird cries out in pain, as he holds a new wound gushing with blood on his forehead. The bullet just grazed him but it hurts like the devil. Sabertooth stopped laughing and approaches John, right behind him.

"My first shot," Scalphunter says, "-was a warning shot. This one's for kill!" The Marauder discharges his weapon again, but this time John ducks, having the bullets pierce Sabertooth's skin. He cries out and falls to the metal ground below. "You bastard! Look what you made me do."

"Tough luck, buster!" Moving like a cat, Thunderbird kicks Scalphunter in the chest, forcing him to drop his weapon and he buckles back, alongside the other two Marauders. John, then, picks up the gun and smashes it over his knee. "This just isn't your day!"

"It's time to get out of here," Scalphunter seemily talks to himself. "We'll be back another day."

"Yup, you're right," Sabertooth responds to him. "No sense wastin' time here."

And then, all at once, the three Marauders-- Scalphunter, Sabertooth and Vertigo-- disappear in a flash of light. In seconds, they are no more. Not a trace is left of them.

And for the first time in a long while, John is proud of himself. He won a fight, without anybody's help. He smiles.

The next day, in New York City, John Proudstar walks down Fifth Avenue. After the fight, he went to a hospital near here and got some medical attention for his wounds. He now has stitches over the cuts on his face, which are healing just fine, and a bandage where the bullet grazed him. The rest of his bruises are almost gone, now, but the <only thing that he does feel good about is his pride. He is so happy that he won the fight and made the enemies flee from him.

He passes Avengers Park. It looks beautiful. Then, he comes to the infamous Hellfire Club Building. It looms above him, ominous-like. His brother is trapped by these evil people. Just thinking about it makes his stomach turn.
He enters a phone booth, picks up the receiver, puts it to his ear and dials the operator. After a couple of rings, someone picks up the phone.

"Hello?" John says into the receiver. "Yes? Can I please 3have the phone number to the Massacusetts Academy?"

The End...for now.

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