Thorn • Scott Summers

thirty

"What the hell happened?" Raven exclaimed as the group of mutants entered the mansion.

"Hello to you, too, Mystique." Florence muttered, and Charles approached his sister.

"Raven, they did it."

"They?" She asked.

"They?" Peter repeated before Charles could answer. "By they, he means Florence."

The green haired girl sighed, shaking her head lightly. "It wasn't just me-"

"Medusa is in a tree because of her," Peter explained to Raven, who raised her eyebrows.

"Oh."

Before anyone else could say anything, Florence heard someone shout her name before crashing into her from behind. She saw a glimpse of yellow before nearly falling over.

"Jubilee-" Florence said through her stomach being crushed. Jubilee let her go and Florence breathed deeply, Scott snickering to himself at her vague dramatic antics.

"They're showing everything! Come on!"

"Showing everything?" Florence said, puzzled. Jubilee nodded quickly, and pulled Florence by the wrist towards the parlor. They reached it, and the TV was on, surrounded by several students on the ground in front of it. The others were behind her, and at the sound of footsteps, one of the students glanced over to the door quickly. John. He waved at Florence, smiling, then his face went slack in realization. He turned back to the TV, then to her. She looked behind him at the screen, and saw footage of herself and the others fighting Medusa and the stone statues. The others noticed him looking away from the TV, then followed his eyes. Their own widened at the sight of the footage.

"Come on," Jubilee pulled her towards one of the couches, and the rest of them sat down as well, piling wherever they could. They watched the TV intently, one of the mutants sitting next to it turning the volume up. It was on CNN, a reporter talking over the footage. The headline at the bottom read, "MEDUSA FOUND RESPONSIBLE FOR PENNSYLVANIA DISAPPEARANCES"

"How'd they get the footage?!"

"Someone must've been hiding around us," Scott muttered.

"We have confirmation from specialists," The woman's voice on the TV rang through the room. "That the person we knew as Medusa, who the world knew as a greek mythological figure, was actually a mutant. We're on line with Dr. Craig Redford from Princeton University right now. Dr. Redford?"

There was a pause, and then a more static voice.

"Thank you, Carrie-Ann. Like you said, after years of studying specifically who we know as Medusa, I had confirmed that she is, in fact, a mutant. She has the power of petrification, meaning she can turn people to stone. For her, it's simple eye contact. She also has increased longevity, which is why she is still alive today."

"Well, actually, Dr. Redford, and all of our audience at home, I've just received confirmation that Medusa is in fact deceased. She was suffocated in the tree that was grown around her. That leads us to the next question: Who are these mutants?"

The group glanced at each other nervously, when suddenly then the headline at the bottom changed to, "TEENAGE MUTANTS DEFEAT MEDUSA; WHO ARE THEY?"

"Oh, shit," Florence muttered, and Charles looked even more nervous when the reporter continued talking.

"We've examined the footage and I have to say, on behalf of all of us here at CNN, we're astonished. I mean, we've seen mutants before, but never like this. The ones that stand out most are  what seem to be some type of blue animal, a boy with wings, and another who is shooting lasers out of his eyes!"