Aiden Killian

Individual

Character's full name: Aiden Brasil Killian
Alias/ Nickname/ Code name: Ai
Gender: Male
Age: 20
Date of Birth: 4/2/1996
Birthplace/ Home/ Place of origin: Carmel, NY
Nationality: American
Ethnicity/ Cultural Heritage: Irish/Scottish/Russian

Appearance

Hair color and style: Deep black; cut quite short but showing a lack of care from travel, with bangs and sideburns with just enough wave to keep the strands from looking like single-stranded thread.
Skin Tone: Pale-fair caucasian with an actual farmer's tan
Eye Color: Left: dark brown; right: pale silver
Height: 5'9"
Build: Lean-boned with a narrow frame, but muscled. Most of the definition relates to his shoulders and upper back, calves, and wrists.
Visible mutation: Normally, just the sheer whiteness of the deep scars on his right shoulder and arm and his silver eye. In the snow, well, he turns white with two silver eyes. Or just looks like... Snow. Because he turns into snow.
Scars/ Tattoos/ Piercings: Scars. Yes. Aiden has them. The most visible is the one that is interrupted by his abnormal eye. The scar itself is more or less horizontal and runs from the bridge of his nose to his right ear, and is associated with a fingernail-sized chunk missing from the outer edge of that ear. His other major scars include a short vertical gash across his right collarbone and a ragged line that overlaps slightly with the upper tip of the previous scar and drapes along the front of his right arm to the right edge of his wrist. All of these scars originate from the same incident, and are a clean white with the faintest hint of iridescent reflection, rather like smoothed snow.
Other features:

Everyday clothing style: Jeans. Shorts. T-shirts. Comfortable stuff. Worn jeans permanently stained with assorted farm substances are currently rather familiar, and the clothes he was able to bring back with him still smell like cow.
Uniform: X-men stuff. to eventually be determined in specificity.
Sleepwear: loose flannel pants with whatever shirt happens to be to hand
Miscellaneous clothing: Maybe once he's replenished the stuff he left at the mansion, which he's quite sure has been sent to his parents following a funeral or something along those lines.

Character

Personality:
Ai doesn't usually come off as a particularly warm guy, but he's hardly bad. He is seriously introverted, and does generally seek out solitude over company, but a great deal of it stems from a deep-seated shyness. While he will readily snap that his brother's the happy social person, growing irritated quite quickly in stressful social situations (with a particularly short temper for idiots), Ai's really been using Conri's shadow as an easy escape from having to deal with people. He tends to be quite self-conscious, being frequently concerned with how he is being read and perceived, and has a hard time trusting new people. Ai is very private, and is slow to trust anyone enough to openly discuss things he considers to be personal.

Much of the time, Aiden has a rather disinterested view towards assigned work. However, should he consider a task worthwhile, he is extremely hardworking and dedicated. He will put in long hours and careful thought on his own time in order to complete the project to his satisfaction - and his standards are generally very high - and once he has decided to do something, it is nearly impossible to make him stop.

Should Ai ever find himself trusting people, they may find his determination to be a bit too much, however - Aiden's defence of those he cares for is automatic and without regard for his own well-being. If he can do something to improve the lot of one of his friends (largely barring social stuff, for that is serious enough to require a polite request on their part) then he will, no matter how much they yell at him for it.

See, once Ai gets over being shy and socially awkward, there isn't much that gets to him. There will always be another day, and even the most dramatic screaming fit will eventually pass, so until then Ai will bear it. He won't grin and bear it, since smiling is a rather rare expression for him. His language tends to be similarly unsweet; while not one for vulgar phrasing, Aiden does not sugar coat words whatsoever, and his honesty takes the distinct form better known as blunt. Asking him if you look fat in that dress is not likely to turn out well (though if he does actually think it works, he'll mutter that too, with noticeably less red-faced awkwardness if he's being asked by a girl).


Hobbies/ Interests: Aiden used to spend most of his spare time on video games and manga. Since spending a very long time STUCK ON THE SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN, inactive pursuits have lost some of their attractiveness. He's had enough bloody quiet time.

Job or part time job and description: X-trainee, officially missing and believed dead

Fears/ phobias/ concerns: For such a self-conscious, withdrawn guy, it sometimes comes as a surprise how few things actually terrify him. Then again, it was something that had never occurred to him that proved to be the worst. Lesser concerns include being assaulted or discriminated against for what he is, expected to do things he can't, and being mistaken for his brother (which is actually the main reason he kept his hair long for so long; he and Conri looked close enough to be twins but his brother never let his hair grow past his ears). He also has some shyness issues with regards to exposed skin, although he's finally grown more used to showing arm skin. As long as no one comments on it or openly stares.

Special talents: Aiden is a skilled keeper when he puts his mind to it, though actually playing on a soccer team is a different matter and distinctly undesired. He is also a large fan of MMORPGs, and does extremely well as a solitary dual-sword-wielding character in those games that allow it (putting in the sheer amount of hours he's logged into a single class will do that). He is also fond of anime, manga, and drawing (which he dismisses as doodles, despite previously dreaming of working in anime or manga production eventually) and has a clear tenor singing voice (which only his brother has heard since he escaped from required music classes). More recently, his studies with the X-Men in close combat and baton work have given him solid skills to fall back on, and he has now also learned to work with horses, cattle, and working dogs to a vaguely tolerable level.

Mostly the dogs tolerate him, and he doesn't go riding alone...

Morality

Good/ bad/ neutral/ other: Aiden is a good, honest person through and through, though his shyness can keep him from being actively good and his naïveté has the potential to leave him open for manipulation. However, Aiden has been hurt far too much to willingly hurt others, for his heart is too gentle for vengeance - and besides, the individual who caused his pain, though through no fault of his own, died in the doing. Active defence of others, though, now that can drive this quiet boy to cause pain in order to prevent more.

Mutations

Mutation Description:
Flesh through to Flake
Aiden's flesh reacts to nearby snowfall, and general snowflake movement, by becoming snow. Under normal circumstances, this process halts partway, and Aiden retains his human shape, senses, and most characteristics appropriate to that shape other than appears. However, as recently proven, it is possible for him to move past that midway balance and break apart completely, fragmenting into individual snowflakes.

Without snow falling, Aiden retain his human colouring with the exception of scars healed by his midpoint form. These scars visually do not shift out of snow form, effectively, and remain iridescent white. He does not lose the heat sensitivity of snow, however, and has poor tolerance for temperatures above about 20c. Low temperatures, on the other hand, have no notable effect on him: he can't actually discern a difference between 0c and -40c. It's just not-hot.

When snow begins to fall, Aiden's body automatically collects nearby snowflakes to transition into a very stable form partway between human flesh and snowflakes. Once he is fully the colour of snow, clothing included, he becomes able to heal and regenerate by subconsciously absorbing external snowflakes into the wound. Injuries healed in this way 'scar' and never regain human colouration, although if later cut would bleed. Aiden is capable of bleeding in this snowman mode, but generally speaking his healing kicks in quickly enough that he doesn't lose any blood. Internal injuries heal at the same rate as external injuries, which is proportionate to the rate of snowfall. Aiden heals quickly and very effectively, though with limitations: except under complete white-out conditions, nothing larger than half a finger can be regenerated, and nothing more complex than a finger can be reconstructed; such recovery takes at least twenty minutes, depending on conditions. Under full white-out conditions, even a lost arm can be rebuilt, and the complexity of such a structure as an eye is little barrier. He cannot replace such critical structures as his head or torso, but injuries to these regions can be healed.

Unfortunately, healing by snow isn't the best form of healing around: Aiden might recover from, say, strained muscles and lactic acid toxicity without delay, but all the pain and exhaustion that the healing avoids is actually only delayed until he leaves snow mode. As soon as he's back to normal, he gets it all at once - he doesn't even get a half-second warning before the entire load sets in. For regeneration of lost snowflakes, he actually ends up getting the pain twice: when he loses them, and then when he shifts back and everything triggers.

Once in snowman form, it is possible to transition farther and break apart into individual snowflakes. However, snowman form is very stable on its own, and either considerable, focused willpower or significant external force is required to kick Aiden past it. A collapsing glacier and partial avalanche was kind of overkill, but effective. Generally speaking, any impact strong enough to knock Aiden more than a few feet in a single impulse is capable of breaking him apart, although willpower-to-stay-together is an important factor. In snowflake mode, Aiden's senses take a hefty tumble and rearranging. He perceives sound as vibrations through his flakes. It's not readily understood as, well, sound, but noticeable nonetheless; understanding takes practice. 'Sight' gets even weirder, as it's tied to a perception of where all of his snowflakes are at every moment, relative solely to the others. He can feel where they are and how they're moving - and when they melt. Melting snowflakes feel roughly like someone is gouging out pieces of his body (but at least it's the only form of physical pain he can feel, being snowflakes?). Sufficient pain or the loss of the majority of his snowflakes without opportunity to replace them will render him unconscious and force him back to flesh-mode. As with his snowman-healing, natural snow around him can be passively incorporated to replace lost snow, which really sucks if he's trying to stop being snow but can't get his mind together enough to do it that way. Aiden can move his flakes, by force of will similar to most kinetics, but the force of will is similar to that required to put himself back together by hand... Which makes sense, because putting himself back together requires moving his flakes by will.

As disparate flakes, Aiden doesn't heal in quite the same way, or rather doesn't get injured. He is, after all, a bunch of snowflakes. If he breaks apart while injured, though, he will continue to heal by collecting snowflakes, and he will replace melted flakes with external ones in the same way. Melted snowflakes do not leave scars but are quite painful. Snowflakes also don't get hungry and are not directly impacted by toxins - but they do absorb them, and when Aiden goes back to human those toxins come with. Since clouds of snow have a very large surface area, interacting with toxic substances, especially airborne ones, can be extremely dangerous.

Falling out of Season
Simply put, when Aiden dances, it snows. The weather itself doesn't change, but drifting snowflakes gradually appear around him as he moves. If the ambient temperature is above freezing, the air will cool to zero degrees celsius for as long as he continues to move. The faster and more gracefully Aiden moves, the more rapidly snowflakes appear and the larger they tend to be. Full white-out conditions require a lot of focused work. Note that he has never actually produced white-out conditions, though such conditions were present naturally upon the activation of his mutation. Under optimal conditions and maximized efficiency, Aiden can theoretically produce a full blizzard from a clear, moderately warm day with about half an hour of hard work.

When in snowflake mode, the movement requirement of this aspect of his mutation remains. If he doesn’t keep moving, no new snow is generated.

Strengths:
Aiden doesn't freeze, so there's that. His self-healing ability, and in particular his ability to regenerate lost flesh, can (and has!) come in very, very useful. His reduction in visibility while in snow mode is a bit of a double-edged sword, since vision-dependent opponents (like most humans) will have a harder time seeing him - but allies close to hand get the same hand; overall, Aiden is really best suited as a solitary close-combat fighter. Or a where-the-heck-is-my-opponent harassment fighter. Or just general distraction and confusion generation. He’s also hard to kill in arctic conditions, especially environmentally.

Also, snowflakes don’t get hungry! Or have bones to break! Or blood to bleed!

Weaknesses and Limitations:
Forming a local blizzard takes time. While Aiden's fighting style is graceful enough to satisfy his mutation, most fights are not consistent enough and pause too frequently to efficiently develop a blizzard. One of his snowstorms, or the magnified portion of a natural snowstorm, is limited to a rough sphere approximately fifteen feet in radius in snow mode (fifteen feet beyond the majority of his snowflakes in snowflake mode); past this point, the rate of snowfall and the snowflakes' ability to resist melting are drastically reduced, though within that radius the snow is more or less homogenous in generation. This range mirrors the reach of his will on his snowflakes: should his flakes stray beyond fifteen feet from the area with the highest density of Aiden-flakes, they cease to be Aiden-flakes without warning or gradient. The sphere of snow follows Aiden, but at a rate of about only a quarter metre per second. As such, Aiden is able to move around in the blizzard and, if desired or forced, exit it temporarily. If he does exit the blizzard, his snow mode will begin to melt away - or the snowflakes that make up his actual body. And if his opponent decides to move away from Ai at more than a quarter metre per second? They won't be staying in the sphere. Guess what. The average human walking speed is more than five times faster than the sphere's top speed. Additionally, Aiden's vision is comparable to anyone else's in falling snow, so he gets to be just as blind as his opponent.

In snowflake mode, any melting of his snowflakes causes noticeable pain. Most people are warm-fleshed enough to melt snowflakes on contact, so in snowflake mode Ai feels people through the outline of pain they give him. Snowflake mode is also extremely vulnerable to airborne toxins, if in a delayed sense: contaminated snowflakes contaminate Aiden’s body when he returns to human form.

It’s also really hard to get into snowflake mode. Or out of it. Seriously. And risky to get out of it forcefully: it's just super painful if he has an area of higher density than the rest of his spread, but if he were evenly distributed he could run into reforming problems. His snowflakes recollect to rebuild him automatically when he loses consciousness, but they have to know where they're going. Hopefully he never blacks out while it's unclear where he ought to reform, or he might end up in several places at once. His flakes are decent at putting critical structures together, but his foot might just get built too far away from his head to connect, and his amount of flesh doesn't change to suit the situation.

Any reduction movement on Aiden's part (or inappropriate, ungraceful movement) will produce a decline in snowfall after about thirty seconds, with significant reductions after two minutes. With absolute stillness, such as unconsciousness (and movement by other people does not impact snow generation), a full white-out blizzard will vanish without a trace after around seven minutes; minor movement will usually extend this to ten minutes.

Aiden also more or less has to dance in order to make it actually snow. Aiden doesn't dance in public (or show off with his swords either, for that matter). This is a problem, isn't it? Dancing without music is also somewhat awkward, and Aiden has a tendency to sing along with his music (which is frequently in other languages, especially japanese [and often discovered through anime]). More things that may very well break his brain if he has to do them in public. On the other hand, if he moves excessively gracefully (as he has a tendency to do subconsciously while listening to good music, or if avoiding some sudden obstacle) chances are that a few short-lived snowflakes will form in his wake. And he listens to a lot of music. Overall, it's easy to accidentally make a couple snowflakes and announce to the world that he's a mutant, but a whole lot harder to make a blizzard and be actually useful.

With regards to the current weather and its effects on a generated blizzard: there is not a particularly great impact upon blizzard generation unless ambient temperatures are above thirty or so degrees celsius or it is raining very heavily. Rain will reduce the vertical range of the blizzard from fifteen feet to ten or twelve, depending on just how heavy it is, and excessive heat increases how hard Ai has to work to develop and maintain the snowfall; in absolutely sweltering conditions, a full white-out is most likely not physically possible, and even light snow will be extremely difficult to generate. In NYC, consider the statistics. The average year sees only eleven days with snowfall. Eleven. Most of those won't be snowing at helpful times either, so if he's lucky he'll get one weather boost at an at-all-appropriate time per year.

Once the situation has faded and Ai's snow mode has melted away, all of that exhaustion and pain he would have felt if he didn't heal hits him like a 747 dropped on his head. Most of the time, as soon as the last bit of white vanishes from his body, he's out like a light for at least a few seconds when everything first hits; it's kind of like having your mild-mannered best friend suddenly punch you in the face. Theoretically, trying something like developing a white-out blizzard from nothing with warm ambient conditions and then maintaining it for, say, half an hour, while fighting flat-out, and Ai'll probably be comatose for a week. Considering this, Aiden is extremely dependent on having external support following a battle, though for actual combat he is best suited for solitary work. Even if Aiden can win a hard fight, as soon as things settle down he'll be out cold and at the complete mercy of whoever stumbles across him. For that matter, this makes for a considerable combat weakness as well, as forcing him out of the blizzard long enough to get him out of snow mode is more or less an automatic win if the battle's been at all difficult and long.

Physical Abilities

General Physical Capabilities: Without snow, Aiden is simply a fit, agile individual with moderate dual-baton ability and the strength and stamina of someone who intentionally trains both abilities. When snow falls, however, he suddenly becomes more difficult to spot (go figure) and heals.
Fighting Style: Thanks to lots and lots of training (and fainting) from Cafas, Ai's getting better with batons as opposed to swords and might eventually be able to hit someone without having an emotional breakdown. He's agile, quick, and coordinated, with a decent head for strategy. He's definitely best suited to single close combat.
Fighting Style Pros/Cons: Running away is usually quite effective, especially with all the running he's put in following his mountainous 'vacation.' Should he actually end up in a true fight, he is rather difficult to hit (unless you count touching a few snowflakes as a hit) and does know what he's doing with his batons, but he may have had a mental breakdown the time he accidentally split Cafas' eyebrow with a stray baton... Additionally, Ai is a close-range fighter through and through, so dealing with longer-ranged people is going to go badly for him. Further furthermore, he is by far best suited to single combat - dual swords don't fare all that well in multi-opponent brawls - and doesn't play well with others. In… more than one sense >.>

History Of Your Character
Life used to be pretty darn normal for Ai. He grew up in a small city about an hour and a half from NYC proper, which wasn't particularly different from any other town. His family unit was quite standard, with a brother a year older than him, Conri, of whom he was always jealous, and two conservative parents who worked all day in bland city office jobs. His family lived on the borders of town with a couple of acres of trees and a german shepherd.

The two brothers were very similar in appearance, and close enough in height to frequently be mistaken for twins. In behaviour, however, there was little outward congruency. Conri was the outgoing, confident athlete - he fell into soccer in elementary school and by high school had serious goals for playing through university and maybe going to medical school afterwards. Aiden was always reserved, and though he had a better head for languages and math really only put openly consistent effort into playing video games; his parents thought he had tired of actually using his swords (an online purchase grudgingly agreed to when Aiden was about twelve) years before, and even Conri didn't know the full depth of Aiden's efforts.

In private, though the two brothers never so much as made eye contact unnecessarily in public, the two worlds were far closer than most thought. Aiden helped his older brother with spanish and math, Conri tried to explain Shakespeare to his younger brother, Conri never scored an honest goal (though many dishonest ones) against Aiden and Aiden could never quite keep up with Conri in any game that involved flexible thought.

See, in ability (excluding classroom subject strengths) the two brother were very similar. Aiden was quick and reacted easily - both part of the reason he was so good at video games and a product of his dedication - but he wasn't really interested in sports, especially team sports. Conri was a great deal more open and trusting towards people, and spent enough time thinking things through that he didn't need superb reactions. Additionally, while Ai never trusted easily, both he and Conri would defend those they trusted without any regard for themselves. As might be expected, Conri had to do a lot more defending than Ai.

Such life cannot last forever, however. A short while before Ai's seventeenth birthday, he and Conri were driving back from a soccer game in Poughkeepsie, some distance to the north. The weather had been looking unpleasant all day, and near the end of the game snow began to fall. As they headed home, the snow gradually worsened, and as they neared Lake Carmel visibility deteriorated to nothing. They were only in the worst of the blizzard for a few minutes, but even that was enough for an oncoming vehicle to drift into their lane.

The two vehicles ended up on opposite sides of the road. Ai and Conri's was upside down. Ai briefly roused, blood coating most of his face and his shoulder burning worse than he had ever previously felt, but slipped into unconsciousness again as the storm faded, never quite realizing that the bloodied arm partially flung over Conri, who was in turn partially flung over Ai, was white where the flesh wasn't shrouded by blood.

When Ai awoke in hospital, he was neither injured nor white. By the time the paramedics had been called and arrived, the snow had ceased falling, Ai's snow mode had melted, his injuries had healed, and his brother had died, likely in reverse order. Due to the relative remoteness of the area and the poor weather, the crash wasn't discovered and called in for over an hour.

The local hospital wasn't particularly keen on keeping an uninjured kid in one of their too-few beds, but torn between grief at the loss of one son and the revelation that the other was a mutant - the hospital had run the test when Ai came in without seemingly fresh injuries - they refused to bring Aiden home, especially when they first caught sight of his now-silver eye. One of the nurses on Ai's floor passed them a brochure, and they leapt at the opportunity to not have to deal with a mutant child without fully losing the only one they had left.

Aiden survived his first summer at the mutant school, and has actually taken up training with an X-Man, Cafas - and entered into official X-Men training himself. His roommate's still a pain most of the time, pretty much everyone around still confuses and/or disturbs him, and he still holds onto his brother's picture a bit more often than he maybe should, but he's doing a lot better. And no more sunglasses, at least around the mansion!

As his training with the X-Men progressed, Aiden was able to go on a joint training mission with the West Coast Branch: a remote subarctic training mission. Spend most of a summer promising to set heat records on a glaci Hell. Yes.

Unfortunately, it didn't go as well as planned. It began well enough, certainly, but somewhere during the 'How To Not Start Avalanches Part 2' segment someone... Triggered an avalanche. Sort of. More of a significant collapse of the local section of glacier. Aiden had been working farther down the slope with the people who had managed Part 1 well enough to not need it hammered into their heads more. Then came the cracking roar of fracturing ice, and Aiden found himself lost in a summertime blizzard not of his making.

He didn't die, although it took him a very long time to work that out. For so long, so very, very long, he was just there. He couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't move. He had no heartbeat and didn't breathe. He felt spread out in a way that defied limbs, gradually stung with flashes of such pain that would have soon left him screaming - if he could scream.

Instead there was only existence, and pain, and vague sensation he couldn't process, didn't understand, didn't recognize. All he could do was think and feel pieces of him die in a blaze of fire.

Time eventually lost meaning and recognition, and the moments of pain grew more frequent until they overwhelmed him.

And then he was awake, and could blink and see arching wood over him. He was alive, and he was... Himself. As he knew himself. And even the sensation of waking was familiar. It was just... A more extreme version of his usual post-fainting awakenings.

He soon learned some of the story that had passed him unawares. An ultra-remote, self-sufficient ranch. One of the range riders passed near the old glacier creeping into an outlying pasture-valley. He thought he saw a stray calf out on the ice, but found a person instead. Everyone expected him to die, for surely he had suffered from exposure and dehydration and hypothermia, even in late summer. Instead, he woke on his own - although by then, he was definitely dehydrated and starving.

Aiden's first response wasn't at all coordinated, but after some time to sort out that he had somehow survived several months in the strange limbo that haunted every moment he couldn't see or hear or taste or feel, he had one mission: get back to New York, or at least get a message to his team.

That was easier said than done, unfortunately. He was very much in the middle of nowhere, with no internet, cell service, satellite service, or road access. The ranch staff all lived on site, and were almost completely intermarried. They generally only left once or twice a year, and wouldn't be heading out again until spring: four-by-four vehicles were one thing, but they couldn't handle high mountain passes in winter all that well.

So Aiden was stuck, and couldn't even get word out that he was alive. His hosts were fair people, at least, and promised to pay if he worked on the ranch until the next trip. That way, he'd at least be able to get closer to home than the nearest town - which was a tiny village with the primary virtue of being on a major road. You know, major in northern terms.

Aiden never grew particularly good with horses or cattle, although the farm dogs were fairly relaxed around him, but he did what he could, and he kept training as he could. Extensive running, those workouts that didn't require specialized equipment. His batons had been lost in the accident, and he was never able to recover them, but one of the other ranchhands whittled some solid branches into vaguely suitable alternatives in exchange for Aiden's reluctant participation in a brawl. 'It was what they did for fun,' he claimed, and eventually Aiden gave in.

Ai still couldn't hit anyone beyond directly blocking them, but neither could anyone hit him. It became a regular challenge, and so Aiden found himself more in shape than he had feared when spring finally came.

Then he found himself missing those informal matches, because he then had to survive several days of buses just to get to the state capital, which was the first place with an airport. Which had basically only small airplanes. So he had to wait until one of the less-frequent larger planes that actually made it to the rest of the country without stopping in Canada on the way, since he didn't exactly have a passport. He had a feeling he wouldn't have been able to get on the plane if it were anywhere more populous and concerned with security.

Basically, by the time Aiden Killian finally found himself back in New York, New York, he was exhausted, frustrated, stressed, and probably the closest to punching someone he had ever been, but would probably just go sit in a freezer for a few days instead.

Roleplay
Where did you learn about this site?: YOU KNOW HOW
Do you have any other characters on MRO, if so who: YOU KNOW ME (Adder and Memo)
Sample RP:
Even he could tell that his parents really didn't want to be here. They entered the room, yes, but only enough to close the door behind them, and then stood there awkwardly. Ai had looked away as soon as he had seen who was there, unable and unwilling to see his parents' faces. Did they blame him? Hate him for what he had proven to be? Even if they only grieved as he did, how could he look them in the eye? They could hardly mistake the drastic colour change in his right eye, even at a distance.

There was a faint sound, like a breath interrupted, and then several steps neared Aiden's bed. They retreated again almost instantly, and the door creaked.

When he finally found the courage to turn his head, the room was empty once again. He knew it. How could things ever go back to how they had been? Even if he could bear his parents' gaze, Conri was gone. Dead. Buried, while Ai was still restricted to this foreign bed. Not that he could honestly pretend that he didn't deserve his parents' reaction. Being what he was was one thing, and something he could keep subdued. But a mutant?

There was something on the table beside his bed. Aiden's brow furrowed, and drew it towards him. As he did, a smaller piece of paper slid out from inside the folded page.

10am. The taxi will have your things.

The note slipped from his fingers, and he numbly turned his gaze to the glossier paper. "A school." So they wanted so little to do with him that they wouldn't even let him finish this year at home, much less take him to this new school themselves? Aiden's heart was heavy as he let the brochure drop to the floor unread, and he gently rubbed his shoulder. For all that the injury he didn't remember getting was apparently fully healed, he wasn't used to how the scar tissue pulled when he moved.

It was almost ironic that he was being sent away because of that scar that should be raw flesh and that miscoloured eye that proved he was a mutant, a freak of nature. He supposed that being able to heal himself, albeit with a near-complete loss of colour, wasn't the worst way to be a monstrosity. At least he wasn't blowing things up whenever he moved or something; if he had to be a mutant, at least he was a pathetically weak one.