Title: Outlaws by Richard Rory Author: Anonymous ********************** "They're not everywhere. Official estimates of the United States Department of Defense say that mutants make up less than one percent of one percent of the world's total population. Yet no group of people has ever gripped the imagination of the world as mutants have in the last thirty years-- and no group of mutants has engendered the fierce controversy that has followed the X-Men since the day that they burst upon an unsuspecting public, despite that very little is know about them in the first place." From OUTLAWS: Three Weeks with the X-Men, by Richard Rory ********** He looked pretty normal. Blue jeans, oxford shirt, adolescent slouch-- though he must have been in his late 20's at least. Sandy hair peeking out of his signature Dumb White Guy backwards baseball cap (Mets). He could have been just about any seventh year senior at any public university, hoisting my two bags easily and carrying them out to the car: a red convertible. "I'm Bobby," he said. He had an all-American smile, perfect teeth. He threw the baggage into the back seat and hopped into the front. I opened the door on the passenger's side and slid in next to him. He gunned the motor and he took off at a pretty good clip. "Don't let 'em get to you!" he shouted over the hum of the engine as we hit the open road. He was smiling like a kid with a new toy. It made me nervous until I realized that he was just enjoying the drive. "Who's that?" I shouted back. "Them," he yelled. "All of them! Don't let them get to you!" I looked up at the road, whizzing underneath us at a speed that must have been illegal. It seemed kind of a weird thing to say. I wondered if he was trying to psych me out-- were they going to play good mutant, bad mutant with me? I had resolved to be as open as possible with them though; I figured it was the only way I could gain their trust. "What do you mean?" Bobby wasn't listening. He was watching a couple of high-school looking girls pass us in the next lane. They smiled at us (or perhaps they were smiling at our red convertible.) I assume Bobby was smiling back. He turned back to look at me, still smiling. "Man! This is a great car." *** "So what are the X-Men REALLY like? This is the question that I had asked myself over and over again as I prepared myself for this project. This is the question everybody asks. "The answer is: They are not normal folks just like us. They are mutants. And as bizarre as they are, their situations are compounded by the fact that they are each unique, of course, as all people are, and not much better at relating to each other than they are to 'normal' humans. Some have a total mastery of their mutant powers and are not obviously different from the average person of their society. Others cannot even pass for human. Most fall somewhere in between these extremes. No two that I met were even remotely alike." From OUTLAWS, by Richard Rory *** Charles Xavier was scary. Although bound to the wheelchair, he had one of the most commanding voices I had ever heard-- and the strongest face I had ever looked upon, capable of silencing one with the flick of an eyebrow. The spooky thing about him was that I always had the feeling that he knew more about me than I did-- there was always something superior about him-- not quite smug-- just possessed of a confidence that was--superhuman. When he drilled those dark eyes into me, I felt that he could study me to my core. When I had arrived at the school, Xavier was waiting for me upstairs in his den. Beside him stood Scott, a tall, slightly thin man in dockers and a pressed shirt. He wore a peculiar pair of red sunglasses-- I recognized him from the reports I'd made and the few pictures of the X- Men I had seen. "Mr. Rory," said Xavier, "Thank you for coming." I nodded. "It's my pleasure. I've been really looking forward to it." "Why?" said Scott suddenly. With those glasses covering his eyes, he was inscrutable. "Because-- I--" I didn't know what to say. Because I've always been fascinated by the X-Men? Or because I've always been fascinated by mutants? What they would they be more impressed by-- freakshow gawking or hero worship? "Because--I need a job. This book will make me famous, and it'll make me a lot of money. And because I am sympathetic to your cause," I added, as if it was an afterthought. "We don't need your sympathy," Scott snapped. "I'm not so sure," said Xavier, looking up at him. Scott scowled and turned, walking over to stand by the window. Xavier put those eyes on me again. "At any rate, we do need your book. This is a great chance to humanize mutants to the public. I want to make it clear to you that by associating yourself with us though, you will be putting yourself at great risk." I had covered riots, guerilla wars, natural disasters-- I had lived in New York City for three years. "I'm prepared for that." Xavier blinked at me expressionlessly. "Are you?" *** "Two things fuel the X-Men. For many of them, their life of unceasing violence and danger is the only one they've ever known. Several of them joined in their mid-teens and seem entirely at ease with the situation. The rest were generally disparate types of adventurers before they joined-- either spies, thieves or performers. Both types are locked into a culture of eternal retaliation against a veritable army of enemies, most of which are other mutants (Magneto being the cardinal example.) "But the X-Men have also seen the unending prejudice, hatred and fear directed at mutants-- and most of them have seen it close up-- many of them in the role of victim. To a person, the X-Men genuinely believe that they are struggling for survival against a world which, at best, mistrusts and manipulates them, and, at worst, enslaves and destroys them." From OUTLAWS: Three Weeks With the X-Men, by Richard Rory *** "I think there's something you should see," said Jean. Scott had just stormed out again, his footsteps still audible on the carpeted stairs. It was my third day and I had yet to spend more than five minutes in the same room with him. "OK," I said. I had the feeling that I was going to discover nothing until I had creacked Scott. He was their leader as much as they could have one. Gaining his acceptance would lead to getting the acceptance of the others. "Stay here," said Jean. She smiled in a slightly maternal way and started up the stairs to the attic. It was hard not to watch her. Jean moved like a deer. Everything she said and did seemed to be entirely spontaneous yet as graceful as an actress or a dancer. She returned in a few minutes with what appeared to be four mouldering photo albums. She put them down on the table in front of me. "For a long time, when he was younger, Scott was in an orphanage. This was his hobby during that time. He still keeps it up; there are six more volumes." "What are they?" I asked. Jean had the most lovely green eyes. Brighter than any I have seen before or since. "It's pretty self-explanatory," she said. "Take your time." Jean left me alone, treading quietly down the stairs in her bare feet. I opened up the creaking photo album cover. Inside was a yellowed newspaper clipping. The headline read, BOY WITH SCALES, 11, MURDERED BY PARENTS. One article had been set alone, without any notes, into the center of each page. I read the article. I turned the page. The next headline was, NEW JERSEY FIRESTARTER: MAN OR DEMON? It was a long night. 2/4 *** "The scars that the X-Men have acquired over the years are definitely more than skin deep. It occurred to me that maybe those mutants who could pass for normal humans but chose to live and fight side-by-side with the X-Men were definitely not psychologically standard. They had a deep-seated need to engage in a lifestyle that put them constantly at the risk of ostracism, incarceration, serious injury and even death. Strangely, the mutants with the most severely atypical physical characteristics (blue fur, for example, or a tail) are often the best adjusted of the bunch. It's hard to account for this, but I began to feel that living with such a burden from birth had inured them to a certain amount of hostility and stress." From OUTLAWS: Three Weeks With the X-Men, by Richard Rory *** "Look at me, Richard. Stare at me." Henry suddenly put his enormous hand up in front of my face. It was bigger than my face. It seemed, that close up, as if might be bigger than my entire head. It was.. a very inhuman looking hand. The nails were long, almost claws. It was densely furred, even on most of the palm. "Um," I said. I became a writer because eloquence is my strong suit. He pulled his hand back. "I'm not doing this to unnerve you, Richard. But I find that the uninitiated often have a problem with my appearance-- perfectly understandable really: I am an utterly unique organism on a planet teeming with millions of different species. But it does get a little old. So look at me. From every angle." He held his head in profile, from both sides. I looked at ridges on his head, the slightly pointed ears, the thick muscles of his shoulders. He opened his mouth, pulled his lips down so I could see his pink, spotted gums and his sharp canines. "You look uncomfortable," he said. "Yeah. It's hard to look." He smiled. "Right. And hard not to look." I nodded. "That's the problem with mutants, you see. You see? You see! Seeing is the problem. We don't fit. People are fascinated with us-- the phsyical abnormality-- the power that we possess. But they don't really want us around, not in the slightest. The world would be so much better if we were just concoctions in some bizarre fantasy! But they see us and they don't have the slightest idea how to classify us. At least black people are mostly black and white people are mostly white! Mutants come in an infinite number of shapes and sizes and range in power from a baby born with no limbs to Magneto himself. You're staring, Richard." "I'm listening," He had captured me with his voice, his slightly British, affected accent. I felt sure I wasn't staring. "We're not a race, really. That is the true fallacy hoisted upon the uneducated public by Magneto and his ilk. Make sure you get this in your book. A race is a bunch of organisms united by relatively similar DNA: the variations are, for the most part, predictable within that group. A mutant-- each of us, Richard-- is a unique creature: a representative of a new race. But mutant-- what does that mean? How can a race be 'everything else'? A classification, maybe.. but a race? No." "But can't you make the opposite argument?" "Yes," he said. He betrayed a real smile now. "You can. You can argue that we're all humans, that the variations that are in my DNA are just slightly more eccentric than the variations that determine that your hair should be an indeterminate brown color or that your skin color, if properly deprived of sunlight, will be that particular pasty white. Taken to this extreme, you can argue ultimately that any variation is just a matter of degree-- and one would have to draw the line somewhere before, say, all mammals are human beings." "Right. I see what you mean there." "Good. I'm going to tell that I'll have to work on you a little bit to try to clean the brainwashing out of that head of yours. Too much USA Today perhaps?" While he spoke, he turned to the fridge and pulled out two cans of beer. "CNN," I admitted as he handed me one. "Stunning," he said, "how a perfectly bright, well-educated person like yourself will let himself be influenced by a medium that is a seriously inferior means of transmitting information of that nature. Mmmm." He popped the top of the can and tipped his head back to drink. I could see his throat muscles moving.. a little bit of beer foam was caught in his whiskers. He put the beer down, licked his lips. "Now tell me: I read your poetry. Was it me or did I detect a strong John Berryman influence?" I practically choked on my beer. "I love Berryman." "Yes. It shows. It's been quite a long time since I had someone to talk about poetry with." *** "These self-appointed protectors of the human race have a variety of attitudes about human-mutant politics. It might be much too simplistic to compare Charles Xavier with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Magneto with Malcolm X; but certainly Xavier favors less violent, more mainstream means of advancing mutant concerns; Magneto favors self-determination through violence, and, at times, has advocated the outright takeover of national governments. Interestingly, it seemed to me that some X-Men were on the verge of being ideologically aligned with Magneto; only their sense of loyalty or family kept them in Xavier's fold." from OUTLAWS, by Richard Rory *** All I could think of was Bobby, grinning, shouting over the car's roar: "Don't let them get to you." I stood face to face with the hairy little maniac, (for amazingly, he was only as tall as I am.) Every cell in my body was sweating; I'm sure he could tell I was shaking. But I also knew that it was important to not back down, fear or no fear. For a week, Logan had meticulously avoided me. His reticence seemed almost Japanese-- unashamed hostility marked by a complete unwillingness to enter into conflict openly. So I had asked him finally to talk to me. "Why?" he asked. We stood in the hallway. For the first time that predatory gaze was trained on me alone. "Because.. I want to talk to everyone. Because I'm writing a book." "Why?" I swallowed and tried to ressurrect my best college smartass face. "Because I want the movie rights to your life story! Why do you think?" He stared at me for a long time, totally silent. It reminded me of the way I've heard that hunters sit and wait for hours for the approach of their prey. "We can talk," he said finally. "Right now, I was going downstairs for a drink." "Great!" I said. He looked up at me, his dark eyes curbing any elation I might have felt. "But," he continued, "you have to match me shot for shot." I smiled. "No problem-- as long as you're buying." His lips curled back over his teeth into a smile. "I'm a mutant, you know. Don't say I didn't warn you?" "No problem," I said. "I'm a writer." 3/4 "With all the emphasis on violence and politics in this account, so far one might imagine that I was blind to that essential humanity of my subjects. Nothing could be less true. Their bitterness and mistrust toward me spoke volumes about their situation and their perceptions.. With some, such as former Avenger Henry McCoy, I struck up an instant friendship. With others, there was a stinging animosity, that was never confronted, much less overcome. And then there were the women. The three women I met during my stay easily outdistanced their male comrades in the categories of compassion, reasonableness, and practicality. Their beauty also seemed uncanny.. to call these women somehow inhuman is to do a cruel disservice to the human race." from OUTLAWS, by Richard Rory "I made you some soup," said Ororo. She stood in the doorway like a black angel, a steaming bowl in her hands. As she walked up to the bed, a light breeze washed over me. She wore a loose white diaphanous gown which she filled out magnificently as the breeze played with it. Sick as I was, I (again) couldn't stop myself from looking. "Thank you," I said. She lowered the soup gently to the bed table. It smelled great, slightly garlic.. chicken broth, I guessed. "It's Kitty's recipe," she said. "A dear friend." "I feel really stupid." Ororo laughed gently. "Nobody really escapes Logan, Richard. Did you find out what you wanted?" I looked over at the tape recorder and my notebooks. The very thought of last night's adventure almost made my stomach heave again. I looked back in to those wide blue eyes. "No. Better than nothing though." She nodded. I thought she would leave for a moment but she didn't. "Sit down," I croaked. She sat down on the edge of the bed and took my gray hand in her own. Hers were cool. "Richard, I'm sorry about the way you've been treated. I can tell that you're a good person." "I think you're the only one who's ever said that-- mutant or not." She gave a little smile. "Will you do me a favor?" "Yes," she said. I handed her a book of Dickinson's poems. "Read to me." Ororo smiled again, and this time it was just like sunlight. "I don't think you're too sick to read, Richard." "No. But if you leave, Ororo.. I'll just have to try and imagine your voice." She looked at me for a few eternal seconds then placed the book in her lap, opened it up seemingly at random, and began: "Wild nights" she said, glowing. "Wild nights! Were I with thee, Wild nights should be.. Our luxury!" *** "If you think that the X-Men spend all their time battling evil mutants and saving the world from itself, you're wrong. The constant pressure and the danger that come with the job are alleviated by an intensive daily schedule of practice sessions, athletic exercises, and mock battles. There are other games as well..." From OUTLAWS, by Richard Rory "If y'all break up my monopoly," said Rogue, "I'm bustin' heads." Warren picked the dice up and shook them in his blue hand. He rolled a five and a three; his slim blue fingers picked up the metal car and tapped it exactly eight spaces, landing it on Park Place. His light blue eyes flicked up onto mine. His blue eyes weren't like Ororo's or Rogue's. They were the blue of the faces of the dead.. "Pay me," I managed to say. Slowly, Warren counted out the monopoly money, without taking his eyes off me, then extended his hand with a sheaf of crisp bills. Bishop (first name? last name?) rolled the dice and moved his own piece. Muscles surged and broke like waves across his meaty arm as he moved his own gamepiece. It landed on Reading Railroad. "Bish honey!" said Rogue, "Ya got all four railroads!" He scowled at her. "I fail to see the pleasure to be derived in such an acquisition." "Ya got all the railroads, hon-- now ya get the big bucks!" Bishop's face soured and he looked over at me though his words were addressed to her. "I often wonder if it's not your era's obsession with material things that set the tone for my own time.." His own time. Yeah. Bishop was scary. "Lighten up, Bish," Rogue drawled. "It's the American way!" I picked up the dice and shook them. They came out threes. I moved my iron six steps, landing on Free Parking; I was relieved. "It is the American way," said Warren, impatiently pushing the dice over to Rogue. "And it's wrong. And I'm part of it." "We're all a part of it," I said quickly-- maybe too quickly. "Even those of us who don't have a monopoly. That's the point." Rogue shook the dice over and over in her hand the little bones clicking musically. "Y'all could just relax, y'know.. and start worrying about something y'all can change. Like the outcome of this game." Warren shook his head grimly. He was talking to me now. "There's only one outcome to this game. One person wins. Everyone else loses. As long as you play by the rules, that'll never change." "During my short stay, I witnessed them at work, at play, at odds. I argued with them and listened to them. I was accepted and I was shunned. For a few short weeks, I shared their life-- sort of. There was one thing I didn't and couldn't share: their violent struggles with other superhumans." from OUTLAWS by Richard Rory *** The knocking was very loud. I sat up in bed, sitll in a half-dream, Ororo's warm arm on my bare chest. "Richard!" someone shouted. "What?" I got out of bed. Ororo's gently stirring form was a soft blue in the dim light from the window. "Is she in there with you?" "Who?" I said. I looked around my room as if there was somewhere to hide. I expected him to yell but instead he spoke in a hoarse voice just above a whisper. "Richard, is Ororo in there?" "Yes," I said. I looked over and saw that she was sitting up, rubbing her eyes. She looked almost like a child... "Tell her we're needed. In the hangar. Twenty minutes." Then the sound of footsteps receding. I turned back to her. She was already picking up her dress from the carpeted floor. "You're going?" She nodded. "Be careful," I said-- then her lips were on mine. Twenty minutes later, I heard a faint roar in the distance-- the plane. They hadn't allowed me down into the vast network of tunnels that housed most of their high-tech security stuff. I lay in bed for about ten minutes feeling terrible. Ororo and I had tried to be discreet, but now it look even worse-- as if we were hiding something. I sighed. We had been something, hadn't we? After about half an hour of that, I went downstairs. The radio was playing some soft classical music in the kitchen and I found Xavier sitting at the table, hands folded before him, a plume of steam rising from a cup with an X emblazoned on the side. He looked up at me and tried to smile. "Coffee?" "Sure," I said. He poured me a cup. "I suppose you've been wondering what it's like to be the leader of a swashbuckling band of outlaw superheroes-- or to be the greatest telepath on the planet." I nodded as he pushed the second cup to me slowly, careful not to spill hot coffee on his fingers. "Well," he said, sighing and folding his soft hands again, looking up at me. He looked old all of a sudden. "This is what it's like." 4/4 "Perhaps the most telling moments of my stay with the X-Men were the little things. The things that no one could plan on happening or not happening. The things they tried not to show me. The reactions I tried not to have to things they said. The rare moments when we stepped out of our prescribed roles, even if just a little..." From OUTLAWS, by Richard Rory I was on my way to visit Hank downstairs. We'd been meeting every afternoon.. ostensibly as a time for him to answer questions-- since he was by far the most forthright of the bunch. But our conversations had..mutated. As we sat and talked, the conversation was just as likely to shift to politics or philosophy or ethics or literature. I paused on the stairway because I heard Scott's voice in the kitchen where Hank was waiting for me. As far as I knew, I was the only other person in the house. There's not a sensitive way to put it: sensing that they were talking about me, I eavesdropped. "-- a little unfair, don't you think?" Scott's voice: "Oh come on, Henry. What's fair and unfair? He told us that he was doing what he was doing to make money." "Because he couldn't tell you the truth. He wants to write the real story. To show humanity what the X-Men are about. He can't say that." A little humor lightened Hank's voice for a moment. "For one thing, it would sound silly. For another, you wouldn't believe him. You'd never believe that a normal human being like him could be as stupid an idealist as yourself-- you think you're special that way, don't you?" There was a long pause and I could hear that they weren't moving. Scott's voice was robotically calm as he said, "You know, Hank.. I would never let anyone else talk to me that way." "That's another problem you have," said Hank. There was another long pause. "OK, I admit it. Maybe it's not fair. Maybe it's not reasonable. I just don't trust him. It's an instinct." "Come on, Scott! You live with Gambit, for God's sake! Does that scumbag deserve acceptance more than Richard just because he's a mutant? Isn't that what we're against, that whole attitude?" Scott said nothing. "I know that's not what you believe," said Hank. "I know that's not what Charles taught you." I sensed that this was the moment I'd been waiting for-- I probably wasn't going to get a chance like this again. I could feel how Scott had been exposed. I padded down the stairs and found them standing in the kitchen. Hank's long blue ear twitched. Scott was looking out the window, leaning against the sink as if he was getting ready to rip it out of the counter and hurl it at his best friend. When the tile floor creaked under me, he spun like soldier, ready to attack me with his hands.. then stiffened again and turned around, back toward the window. Hank said nothing. "You were eavesdropping," said Scott. "Yeah.. you guys were only yelling about me behind my back down here." "You have no right--" I cut him off. It was now or never. Scott scared me more than Logan did when he was like this, but I knew this was going to be my last chance. "OK. You're right, Scott. You're right! I have no right. I never said I have any right. I don't know what you've been through. I don't claim to. By all accounts, I wouldn't trade places with you-- but I am here. And I'm listening. You'll say I don't understand-- fine. Make me understand, even a little. Give me something I can take back to the few people left in America who still read books-- something I can show to them and say-- 'Hey, this is what they said. this is what they did. This is what I learned.' This might be the only chance you ever get to say your piece. It's definitely going to be the only chance I get to help you say it." Scott turned around and looked at me for a long time. Then he went to the kitchen table and sat down. Hank got up and opened the refridgerator. He took out three beers and opened them. He put the three bottles down on the table. I sat down across from Scott. "Where do we start?" said Scott. It was more than a logistical question. He was almost reaching out to me.. it was almost a plea. "Let's start at the very beginning," I said. "The beginning.." he said and his voice got distant. It was disconcerting to look at him, to try to study his face and to always come up against those strange red glasses. "The beginning... I grew up in an orphanage. Everybody hated me. I hated them back. Then Charles found me. And there was a girl named Jean..." *** "True friendship is measured by the willingness to give and receive, I think-- not necessarily according to rules and standards-- but according to one's needs and resources. It became important during my stay to give something back-- besides this book, which, after all, they had given me, really. But what do you get for the mutant superheroes who already have everything?" from OUTLAWS, by Richard Rory *** I sat alone in my room. Everyone else was in bed. Ororo snored softly in the cool summer air that drifted in lazily through the open window. I looked down at my note pad, framed in a square of light from the old desklamp. What was she like? Everything. Anything. Chocolate, the Earth, everything hot and beautiful. Anything tinged with white. Anything with saphires. The night sky.. sparkling, enfolding me. I looked back at her. Those things were lies. They didn't even touch her. "When it was time for me to leave, we swore that we would see each other again. I don't believe it for a second. Our lives won't naturally intersect. So far, as of this writing, I haven't seen them, not any of them. I hope I still might some day, and I think that some of them feel the same, and will feel the same, no matter how this book is received. I can only wish them the best of luck and health and genuinely hope that they might eventually be relieved of their roles as peacemakers and protectors-- permanently-- by a human race that comes to embrace a sanity that seems unlikely just now." from OUTLAWS, by Richard Rory They sent Bobby out to the train station with me. He gunned the car playfully and sped down the highway as if he had never seen a traffic cop in his short life. I had hardly seen him the whole time I had stayed with the X-Men. "Well, you did all right, I think," he yelled. "You lived!" "I guess. Think I'll be invited back for Thanksgiving?" He turned his head and grinned wryly at me, said nothing. "I make good stuffing!" I shouted. He nodded. "We'll keep that in mind. But don't get your hopes up. It'll depend on a lot of things." We drove on for a while, pop-rap music thumping out of the almost too-real stereo stystem of the convertible. He turned as if it was an after thought and shouted, "Hey! Not bad! I heard you got to Scott!" I shrugged. I wasn't so proud of it. He slapped his chest with his right hand a few times. "More than I can say for myself!" He smiled again and I couldn't tell if he was kidding or not. When we reached the train station, he hauled my bags out of the back seat and carried them over to the platform. Then he turned back to me, shook my hand. "I hope it all comes together for you, Richard." "You and me both. Maybe, just maybe.. " I looked away, tried not to be too presumptuous. "Maybe I can make a little difference." "That's all we can ask, Rich. Just take your best shot. And whatever happens.. don't blame yourself. For anything." "OK," I said. I picked up my bags. I smiled and made to turn away from him and start toward the train. "Take care," I said. Bobby put a strong hand on my shoulder. "Richard. Take care yourself. Be very careful. Whether we accepted you or not.. whether you want it or not.. you've thrown in with us now. And there's no going back." The boyish smile was gone. I would have never thought his face could look so serious. "Yeah," I stuttered. "I guess you're right." A smile snuck up on his face again. "Go ahead and send us a few signed copies though, huh?" I turned again, got on the train. And this time, I didn't look back.