Magnet Man Goes West

[Flux]

Okay, so the past week has been nuts. Felix discovered he was a mutant. He met a few people who had offered him help, but Felix had chosen not to act on any of it just yet. Instead, he'd gone to his friends and gotten his homework, as he'd told his mother, and went back home to do it.

He'd spent that weekend in a sort of daze, more concerned over his powers than anything else cranking up his Misfits MP3s and just venting. He'd also found an online blog/forum/community/thing for people dealing with this kind of thing, and he'd made a few posts under the alias "Magnet Man". Oh yes, how very clever, naming himself after a Robot Master.

"I'm not King Geek for nothing," he had muttered, reading through the blog's posts. Most of it he'd ignored; mostly it was just more people venting but he couldn't begin to think of how to help them. The best posts by far were from a person called Technofreak, who rather brutally asserted his/her views on the topics of mutation and human acceptance. This person had also suggested that Felix go and try out his powers, and after a few days, Felix decided to do just that.

There was a scrap yard a few miles west out of town. He could make it easily by bike, though it'd take the better part of his morning. He resolved to wake up early on Saturday and go. The week dragged as Felix anticipated his day of self-discovery, but Friday night went by so quickly Felix felt he'd barely slept, though he had gotten a good 7 hours of rest.

The teen crept out of the house, hopped his bike, and was at the scrap yard by noon. His CD player had run out of batteries, and he cursed it as he rolled through the gates.

"Seriously," he grumbled to himself. "Why am I the only person left in the universe without an iPod? I have enough music to fill 3 of the stupid things. He wound his way into the back corners of the yard, where the piles of scrap were tallest. "I mean, all the jocks, preps, cheerleaders, and rich kids got them for free, and most of the rest of the school has enough money from allowances or jobs to get one. Heh, maybe that's the issue. No freakin' money. Bet I could work at this place movin' junk. Nah, they'd be suspicous at how Sir Scrawny of York managed to move 15 tons of metal on his lonesome."

Felix kicked the kickstand (what an aptly named device) and left his bike where he thought it wouldn't get randomly sucked in by his powers, and approached a pair of rusted old cars. "And for my first trick..." he muttered, focusing on the cars. He knew he'd done this before, his mind had re-created the scene from the previous week from a 3rd person view in his dreams countless times. Slowly, over the course of several minutes, the cars slid toward each other and stuck. "It happened way faster last time. Maybe...something smaller." He collected a small pile of nuts, bolts, and metal scraps and laid them on the ground before himself. "And for my second trick..." The pieces snapped together readily as he stretched his hand over them, and the boy couldn't help but smile. "Hell yeah. We'll build from here."

[Takashi Koji]

He stepped over the tin can, his black Vans touching the surface of the bumper and pushing himself up as he climbed slowly over the rusted hunk of trash that had once been a car before the accident. Probably a semi t-boned it. The vehicle was wasted beyond recognition. It's make and model forgotten. A bit inside him imagined that the pinker rust on the inside was the remains of the bodies of those who had perished. The thought made him smile wickedly. He continued his trek until he was standing atop the passenger section of the vehicle, the junk yard sprawled out before him like a forgotten kingdom ready to be discovered.

Perhaps, but he care for such things. He was not here to conquer, but to discipline and teach, if not by word then by sword. He just needed some time away from it all, to think about things. Life and all that jazz. He was completely committed to his cause. Nothing could sway him from his crusade to destroy the vile and corrupt United States Government that was so eager to condemn mutants and thus the future. He was not fighting for mutant rights, but for the existence of all life. Evolution was nature, it was the future. To discriminate against mutants and hate them, to create "Cures" to heal them, it was all going to lead to degeneration and the destruction of the future. Without a future we have nothing to look forward to. The Human race will simply cease to exist as it's newest form is discriminated against and wiped out.

The future was looking very bleak.

But he had been given the vision, the thought process, the courage. He was going to take all the bitterness and aggression of the world and form it into a spear to drive into the heart of the corrupt. A mutant, he had the ability to transfer his emotions to those around him. One of the mutants within the folds of his revolution had coined the phrase "Mass Empathy", to describe his powers. Mass Effect, he preferred. He did not brainwash those, he simply gave them the emotions they needed to do what they always wanted, to riot against a government they only supported out of fear. Already several hospitals in the area selling so called mutant cures had been attacked, it's doctors brutally slaughtered and any resistance put down as well. The revolution was a beast, a dark animal at his finger tips. Nothing could withstand them.

But a state emergency had been called because of the revolution, and there were more police on the streets, more guards at hospitals and other likely targets, and many of his revolutionaries had died in the recent assaults. He needed time to restore his numbers and plan his next strike. If the government did not do as he requested, to follow the rules he offered them, then more would die. War was the only method they understood. Death the only absolute. Many had died, on both sides and those caught in the middle. But he no more slandered the name of mutant then anyone else. His revolution was mostly human with very few mutants, but already the group was branded as a mutant rights protest. They failed to see the message.

A noise alerted him. His blue eyes turned, framed by his dark hair. His asian face, solemn and dark, turned to the direction the noise came from, but he did not see anything. There was a pile of junk in the way. He hopped down from the car, hitting the ground loudly, his hand coming around to the back of his pants to adjust the hang of the handgun hidden within the waistband, masked under the layers he wore. He moved toward the pile, his all black clothing blending in with the shadows cast by the sun on the other side. The many necklaces, bracelets, and piercings he bore jingled softly as he moved.

He climbed the pile, a mad construction of broken cars and several old washing machines, among thousands upon thousands of pounds of littler junk. He climbed to the top in a moment, his lithe body carrying him to the top, junk shifting around him as he moved. In the end, he stood atop the topmost object, a rusted over truck that laid upside down atop the pile. Down below, he could see a young kid playing around with the garbage. How peculiar. He said nothing, instead he watched. The kid probably heard him climbing up the pile anyways.

[Flux]

Felix hadn't started anything new yet, as he hadn't decided what would size or shape of object would be a good second step. He'd been sorting through a pile of junk dumped in the trunk of a car when he heard the noise above him. Felix glanced up, saw the person standing there, and went back to what he was doing. He'd just find some stuff and wait for the person to go away.

[Takashi Koji]

Koji watched the kid dig through a pile of junk like a man on a mission. This interested him, but only remotely. Idealy, he would just leave this person where he stood and go do something more important, but right now the important thing involved a lot of thinging and soul searching on his part, and he was already exausted on it. A man could only look inside himself so many times before boredom sets in. He knew who he was, what he was, and the direction he was going, but still he had the compulsion to glance inside. There was a nagging thought in his mind that told him he was going about this all wrong, or there was something wrong with him, but he could not for the life of him find out what it was, and he could not just dismiss the feeling.

His powers reacted to his frustration, sending it through the air like a strong aroma that seeped out from him on all sides and drifted outwards, sharing his emotional state with those around him, in this case the kid digging through the junk pile below him. The sense of frustration and exaustion, the desire to give up or riot, it was all transmittable on an emotional level, but it did not end there, his power nailed the emotion into the minds and bodies of those near him, turning their emotional states to his own. Subtly or powerfully, depending on his mood and the emotion. It was a gift, but also a curse because he could not control it or turn it off, it was always on, flooding others with his emotions while forcing him to constantly feel the emotions of others, not that he cared how other's felt.

[Flux]

Felix growled irritably, moving away from the car and onto a smaller pile of junk near the one Koji was standing on. He hadn't found anything useful yet, and to round it all off, Stands On Junk hasn't left yet.

"Dude, you got anything to do here, or are you just gonna stand there and debate on whether or not you wanna do your lemming impression?"