Re: Warning: Incoming Food Porn
The Space Wolf's compliments only made Bobby more willing to tell his saga; a story of infintessimal smallness and general patheticness compared to cosmic horrors and galactic empires, but one which he trusted that Ragnar would sympathize with. The anxiety which had been crawling beneath his skin when hearing about the horrors of the large man's world needed to come out, but this would be the moment of truth; all the respect and compliments - now we see if they'll stand up to facts.
He swallowed his mouthful of beef and began; "well, most of the people here have special powers... apart from Damon I think, we're mostly mutants. Just one gene in our DNA's different from that of baseline humans, but it can do a whole lot of things; it can make us stronger or faster or able to fly or read minds and stuff. I'm an Endo-thermokinetic, so you know what I can do. But the first time my powers manifested, I couldn't control them, and I ended up freezing a guy alive." He took a breath, "that was Rocky. He deserved it, but unfortunately he was the most popular guy in my school at the time, so the townsfolk disagreed. Cue the torches and pitchforks and being held in protective custody by the cops."
But that was only the beginning. The familiar anxiety began to stir in his stomach although the sensation was mitigated by the food's presence. "And Mom and Dad... they didn't want a freak for a kid. Being a mutant? Sure, if you get cool powers out of the deal its got some great pros, but some normal humans hate and resent us. A lot. Only a few years go, the government was funding internment camps and extermination campaigns. And my folks? Well, they'd rather have no kid than an abnormal one. And Dad already didn't like how I didn't fit in or tow the line at School or Sunday School."
Even to this day, that hurt; his own flesh and blood rejected him. He tried not to remember it, but Ragnar wanted his story. "The guy who started this place? Professor Charles Xavier. He offered to relieve my mom and dad of me. And Chuck? Sure, he had a good goal - get rid of discrimination against mutants and that kind of thing. Too bad his plan for that involved training child soldiers... Chuck was a hardass, even worse than my Dad was. He just said I was being immature and kept trying to break me. Didn't even think that maybe he was the one in the wrong. And then there was little lapdog..."
He gritted his teeth as the familiar disdain began to flow. "The Scotty here? That wasn't him. But the Scott from my homeworld? Asshole. Chuck's most loyal little slave," he said as his tone grew corrosive, almost as much as Damon's.
"Chuck wanted me to be a good little Scott Summers... a good little soldier boy. An obedient, unquestioning cog in the machine. But you know what?" he said as steel began to enter his voice and his teeth began to grate; "I didn't want to be like that. I wanted to keep my mind to myself. If that meant Chuck would hate me and Scott would call me a traitor to Xavier's Dream, so be it."
At times he could hear Charles' condemnation coming from the walls when no one else was with him. He remembered Scott shouting at him, calling him a selfish ingrate. But he'd rather be a selfish ingrate than an apple-polishing sycophant. And when Lorna nearly got killed, he simply could not take it any more; sacrifice myself on the altar of Chuck? No goddamn way.
"So the minute I could leave, I did. I was sixteen when I first saw field missions, eighteen when I left. Went to college, got a degree, got a life. The Institute doesn't use kids any more, thank god.. it isn't even a school any more. Doesn't mean I'll be coming back unless they desperately need help." Bobby exhaled then, and his face remained neutral; the brief version of his saga had been told. It was Ragnar's job to judge whether or not it was a worthy tale.