A few months ago, Miles would have started to watch this video and quickly hit the back button, not caring what the fuss was all about. A few months ago, he was an ordinary student with a dormant gene, his friends were ordinary teens and mutants were just people they talked about in the news.

Now he was one of them. Everything that happened to mutants mattered. His friends were multicolored beings, had scales or fangs, came in all sizes and could do all sorts of wonderful things. He could not pry himself away from what he was seeing in the video. He could not believe it either, because one of his multicolored, fanged, winged friends was in it.

They were all in the living room. Classes were over and someone had hooked his laptop to the big screen HD TV and this wasn't even the first time they had played the video. They were trying to make the faces of the police officers, playing it back and forth and then playing it all the way through when a new person who hadn't seen it walked in and demanded to see it in its entirety.

Miles himself was apalled. He knew this girl. If you looked past the skin, claws, wings, horns and fangs, she was as sweet as any teenage girl could ever hope to be. All it took was to hear her talk and you'd know appearances weren't everything. She had a thing for cuteness and little creatures, her boyfriend was a reptilian mutant, there was an air of innocence around her and she even cooked him chicken. How could they be doing this to her, of all people!? She was Gina!

THEIR Gina!

The video started innocent enough, with teenagers ogling over her and showing their ignorance over mutants and their poor camera handling skills. Then the cops showed up and you could see Gina doing absolutely nothing to them. They tried to grab her like she was some kind of criminal and then things got ugly. Every time he saw the car hit her, he'd scream in his mind FLY, GINA! FLY!, but she didn't. They swarmed around her and they just... beat her up. Just like that, they just beat Gina up.

He didn't even bother to ask why, there was really no doubt. She was visibly mutated and alone and mutant haters come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and even jobs. This was inexcusable.

They played the video again, freeze framing on the part they beat on her wings, trying to get a clearer picture of the cops faces but it was all a pixelated, blurred mess at times. Miles just felt his blood boil.

"Bastards" he muttered. "God damned bastards! They just can't get away with this! She wasn't doing anything, this is an outrage!" he said, much louder this time.

The video had reached over a million hits on viewtube, and yet Ruby had tried to avoid it at all costs. She had heard what had happened to it from Emerald, and, quite frankly, she didn't want to view it for herself. Judging by her elder sibling's seething anger, the content would be too much for her to see.

Now, in the living room, the room itself was alive with noise. Everyone was talking about the accursed thing, and everyone was making a big deal about it. Of course it was a big deal, consdering the contents and the person who was in it - one of the mansion's very own students. The fox girl was just as upset about it as the next person, but she just didn't want to see it with her own eyes or hear too much about it. It was almost too much for her to bear to see people she cared about in pain.

The voices and the noises from the video were almost too much for Ruby to bear, despite the quality. Every bit of sound drilled into her sensitive ears. Despite his anger, Ruby found that in the room, Miles was the only one she knew, so just as the video was about to loop again, she desperately clambored over to the boy clinging onto his arm in attempt to not only calm him down, but herself as well.

"Miles... Miles, please make them stop playing the video! It's upsetting everyone," Ruby begged, her ears flattened to her head.

Pain, suffering, everything like that reminded her too much of the labs or the camps and she didn't need to hear it anymore.

It was another long run. Vicente had damn near exhausted himself this time but he didn’t care. Working out was good, especially when it came time to the cold weathers like it was now. Vicente preferred warm temperatures because then he just felt more alive in them (or so he was beginning to learn). The cold weather, bah, it just let him feeling numb. He didn’t care for the shivering and the piling on of clothes and blankets just to fend off the nipping lower temperatures. No, give him heat any time.

That was why he ran. That was why he was just now jogging back in through the mansion doors, dressed simply in a black tank top that showed his muscular arms and the various tattoos they held, a pair dark blue sweatpants, and running shoes.

Breathing heavily, Vicente pulled a towel from the pocket of his pants and started to dab his forehead. He had been living at the mansion for a few months now but there was something off right now. Glancing from left to right, there was a strange…silence. Usually there was always kids running around or students and staff having discussions of one matter or another. But right now…dead quiet.

It was…It was almost like a calm before a storm. And that set him a just a tad bit uneasy.

Moving to the kitchen, Vicente pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and took a long draught of it after he removed the cap. Still drinking, he moved out in the hall when he heard someone gasp. Bringing the bottle down, he dabbed his lips from any excess water with his towel and peered around curiously. Who just gasped?

Curiosity had nabbed him. He needed to know.

Moving down the hall, he listened closely, until finally he came around the sound of more voices. And…they all sounded like a combination of shocked, sad, and scared. That couldn’t be good.

Vicente turned the corner and peered in to see a group gathered in the common room. They all seemed to be staring unblinkingly at the TV. He never knew of a show to be that interesting. He walked in, arched a brow at the gathered people, and finally just followed their lines of sight to the TV.

At first it just looked like a bad movie. Something like the kind where the filmmakers give the cameras to the actors to shoot their points of view? But it was not a movie, it was a clip of some kind. Maybe for some film coming out about corrupt cops or—

Replay was hit.

And his blood went cold.

That sway of hips, the large full wings, the shorts, the perky smile when turned into confusion and finally in fear. He couldn’t believe it.

“Gina?” he asked in disbelief. But what was she doing on the T—

His mouth dried up when he saw the first lunge. He soon became just as unmoving as the rest of the people as he found himself in a state of complete and utter shock, anger, and disbelief. It had to be some joke right? Gina was…like a ray of sunshine. Who could possibly do this to her? But another…and another student rolled into the room, and the clip was played again and again, he knew it was no joke.

“Oh f***…” he muttered as he covered his mouth and watched the clip again. His anger started to rise…

Miles looked at Ruby, her ears trying to block the sound of it all. The whacks from the batons, the cops voices, Gina's shrieks as she pleaded them to stop, the teen's whispered comments as they held the camera, the gasps and cusses in the room from fellow students and mutants, his own angry voice... ALL amplified.

The boy didn't think he'd be able to get them to turn it off, despite that it was indeed, upsetting everyone. You could feel the pent up rage and the frustration of every single person in the room and the guys trying to get a shot at the cops faces at least seemed like they were doing something about it, instead of just crossing their arms. Turning it off would get bellows and protests from everybody.

"Guys, could you at least lower the volume? We don't need to hear Gina beg for mercy over and over and you don't need her shrieks to make the cop's faces" he said, trying to make them understand some ears were more sensitive than others.

One of the guys handling the computer turned the volume down a couple of notches, but not all the way down, then returned to working on his image enhancing software. Miles didn't know if that was enough, so he put his hand on Ruby's shoulder, pulled her closer to him and urged her to go with him away from the screen, to the back of the room, where the newcomers were gathering. Some of them were older and taller, enough to block the TV from view, perfect for standing behind them but still get a sense of what was going on in the room. Miles chose a pretty muscular, tall and tatooed latino looking fellow to stand behind of and talk about what they just saw with Ruby.

"You're right, this is upsetting everyone but pretty much everybody here knows Gina. You can't expect them not to get upset. That... thing they did..." he said, pointing in the screen's direction, failing to find proper words to describe it. "Do you have any idea how many people here feel helpless about it? I know I'm one of them and we're all mutants here, some more powerful than others. What's going to stop people from trying to make their own brand of justice? We can't just turn it off and pretend it didn't happen but we can't just take justice on our own hands. So... what do we do? he asked, not really having a clue of what the answer to that one was.

The video was inescapable. There had been a horrified crowd gathered in the room adjacent from Alice's, replaying it over and over again on what seemed to be an endless loop. She couldn't handle it, so she attempted to escape to the library. There too, was a large group huddled around one of the desktops, watching it on repeat. And one in the dining room, and one near the classrooms, and one in the living room...truly, the video torture was everywhere in the mansion.

And it was not like leaving the school was an option with the media-frenzied chaos going on outside.

The fourteen-year-old resigned herself to her fate and curled up on the comfiest couch in the living room, conveniently as far away from the television as possible. Even so, she could hear the all-too familiar beginnings of the video: the stupid teenage boys making stupid teenage comments, the muffled sounds of tires squealing, a dull thud, and then...the screaming. So much pain in those sounds, so much undeserved pain... She had only seen the accursed, grainy video once, but she had heard its terrifying audio too many times. She knew she would be hearing the screams in her dreams that night, and for the nights to come.

It was...beyond words, how cruel and unfair and violent the things that had transpired in that video were. Alice could not attempt to view it a second time without the bile rising up in her throat and the nausea hitting her in overpowering waves. Yes, she was outraged. Yes, she was concerned for Gina, though she did not know her personally. The fourteen-year-old had heard enough wonderful things about the gargoyle girl to know that she was a lovely human being and was the least deserving of the horrible beating she received. But that did not mean she wanted to see it again and again...

Some of the older boys were freezing the video on the cops' faces, trying to make out their identities amongst the poor-quality pixels and grains. It was fruitless, but their angry need for vengeance, for justice, continued to fuel them.

Some of the students made frustrated comments about the police, about the justice system in general...about "normal" humans... Alice wanted to cover her ears. It was all too much. Too much graphic violence, too much divisive hate, mutant politics she couldn't understand.

She would hear the screams in her dreams...