---

The Diamond District
New York City, New York

“Security in place, Mister Evers?” a woman in a white woman’s business suit asked as she looked at her watch from over her wire-rimmed glasses.

A large black man dressed in what had to be tactical body armor pressed the small device in his ear and after a few minutes after everybody had checked in he knew the answer to the woman’s question. “Yes, Miss White,” the man replied. “We have snipers on the roofs and men stationed at every possible location.”

“Good,” the woman commented. “This is a rare package being delivered today. We can not let anything happen to these precious gems.”

“Don't worry, ma'am,” Mister Evers replied.

A minute or so passed in silence until a large armored truck came around the corner and stopped in front of the Diamond Exchange. “Team one cover the truck,” Mister Evers ordered. A second passed and all he received was the sound of silence. “Team one report!”

“I'm afraid your men are not going to be contacting you,” a tall man said as he appeared in a puff of smoke that smelled oddly like brimstone and knocked Mister Evers out. “All right boys, take the truck.”

Within seconds the body of Miss White dropped to the ground followed by a man flying down on feathery wings, while another appeared from the shadows with a large burly man and, finally, two females appeared, one flying on a jet of flames and the other on an ice sled.

“I want the truck opened in sixty seconds people,” the teleporter ordered.

“On it boss,” said the woman on fire as she began to heat the large armored doors. “Your up, baby,” the woman said to the other woman.

The ice woman simply smiled as she began to freeze the heated door. “It's all you, muscles,” she said to the large man.

The large man walked up to the door and punched the door with his large fist, shattering it in to several tiny pieces. After he cleared the remaining pieces of the door away, he turned back to the leader of the group and kind of grunted to say he was finished.

Stepping into the truck the leader removed the large case that held the diamonds. After opening it and examining the contents he closed the case and headed back out of the truck. “Package is secure people,” he said as he heard sirens coming towards them. “We're out of here. Girls if you please.”

The two girls looked at each other and laughed as they began unleashing their powers of ice and fire at the oncoming police cruisers. While some froze in their place others exploded due to the extreme heat. After playing for a few minutes the two girls took off into the air and headed back to their secret base of operations.

---

The Xavier Institute For Higher Learning
Snow Valley, Massachusetts

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon as Alani Ryan, was sitting on the couch watching the news along with her boyfriend Thomas 'Tommy' Shepherd. The lovebirds decided to watch the news since there was nothing on. Alani seem to pay close attention as the reporter talked about the latest in a string of strange daylight robberies. The latest target by thieves seemed to be an armored truck carrying almost ten million dollars in rare canary diamonds that was robbed yesterday afternoon.

‘Eyewitnesses say that the criminals seemed to strike out of nowhere,’ the raven-haired cute reporter said as she told the information she had gathered so far. ‘A security camera caught part of the robbery as the thieves seemed to use a wide range of special abilities to rob the armored truck. At the moment police have no leads and are unable to figure out how the thieves we able to get away from police and the special Code: Blue Unit. This is Trish Tilby from Global News Network, reporting live from the scene of the crime here in New York City.’

Alani Ryan, Molecular distortion

Alani looked over at the dozing mutant speedster and nudged him in the side. “Hey, you know these daring daylight robberies sound kind of interesting,” the Hawaiian tattooed young woman said. “Too bad we can't look into it ourselves.”

Thomas 'Tommy' Shepherd, Supersonic speed and molecular destabilization

“Well, from what I heard it sounds like these guys may be mutants,” Tommy said as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Ether that or they're really good at faking it.”

“How could you fake super powers?” Alani asked . “It's not like you can just go to a store and buy them.”

“Actually, you can,” Tommy replied after a yawn and stretch.

Alani looked at Tommy with a questioning look. “What do you mean?”

“Well, as you know, before I was brought here by Paige I wasn't always on the side of the angels,” Tommy replied. “When I needed to make a quick bit of cash that didn't involve stealing I would go see this guy by the name of Tin Tin. He'd stick me with this machine and take some blood and tissue samples, then pay a couple hundred bucks. I found out later that it was being used to produce a street drug that gave people powers.”

Alani took what her boyfriend had just said in as she looked at him. “Does anybody else know about this?”

“Just Paige and the headmasters,” replied Tommy. “So what do you have going through your head?”

“I think we should go and check these robberies out,” Alani said looking over at Tommy. “I mean come on we don't have classes today and it's really boring just sitting around here.”

“If we do this then I think we should get some of the others,” Tommy suggested. “If these guys are mutants or just hopped up on some sort of drug, then I'd rather it not just be the two of us going after them.”

“How about we just go see what we can find and if we turn anything up then we can call some of the others,” Alani replied hoping to convince Tommy to go along. “In fact we'll take a couple of the others with us just in case.”

“All right, all right, we'll go,” said Tommy, defeated after seeing the convincing eyes that Alani used to get her way sometimes. “But only to track and, if we have to engage them, we call in the back up.”

“Deal,” Alani said getting off the couch happily. “While I go change into something more investigative street wear, you go see who you can round up for this little outing,” she said as she ran out of the rec room and headed up to her room. “And since it's too far to drive, see if you can get Megan to open a portal there.”

“Great,” Tommy said as he thought for a minute. “Who'd be dumb enough to wanna go along on this trip?” he asked a second before taking off down the hall.

---

Manhattan -- Several hours later.

The Federal Bank Reserve, home to millions in cash waiting to be shipped to banks across the country. Today, however, it finds itself the latest target of the super powered thieves, who were able to brake in, disable the guards and start packing the money away in under ten minutes. Several guards and innocent workers were killed along the way, however, but to this crew of villains it means very little.

“Okay boys and girls, that's time,” the leader of the group called as he looked at his watch. “Black shadow-port the money out of here.”

“What's the rush, Brim?” the winged man asked as he nudged a guard who was barely alive.

“Because, you moron, we've got half an hour before we need to dose up again,” the man known as Brim explained to the others. “Kill him and let's get out of here,” he ordered pointing at the guard. “Wing, take care of him.”

The man known as Wing leaned down and took the man by his neck and with a swift movement snapped the guard’s neck.

“You take too much pleasure in killing my friend,” the man called Black said as he appeared back in the room.

“Innocent life doesn't mean much to me. I'm in this to get paid and that's it,” Wing stated coldly. “Honestly who cares if a few bystanders get iced in the process?”

“I tend to care if somebody innocent dies,” a voice said as a black and white blur shot through the building and collided with Wing, sending him flying backwards.

“What do you say fellas? Wanna give up now and save yourself a trip to the hospital?”

“I say we take'm out now,” the woman known as Blue said as ice began to form around her body. “We can take a wanna be lone hero.”

“Who said he was alone?” a voice asked as Alani passed through the brick wall of the building. The others watched as it crumbled behind the young tattooed mutant.

“I knew we should have left when we had the chance,” Brim grimaced. “Now we gotta deal with some junior X-Men. Get it in gear people! We gotta do this fast, the clock is ticking!”

“You heard him guys,” said Tommy as he tapped a small device that was in his ear. “The clock is ticking on this one. It's a game of round up.”

“How are you going to stop us?” the young woman known as Red said arrogantly as flames begsn to form around her hands. “It's a six on two fight and we have the odds on our side.”

Suddenly a blast of what could only be described as sound waves came blasting through the opening that Alani had made, hitting the woman known as Red and sending her flying across the room. The remaining members of the group of thieves all seemed to turn towards the opening and watched as a young man with dark hair and wearing what seemed to be headphones walk through the opening. They were surprised to see that he was not alone as he came into the building, as following behind him was a large male made up of stone, a girl with electric blue hair wearing metal gloves, and a girl with what looked liked metal skin and red hair.

“Are you sure you counted right,” wondered Tommy as he and Alani joined their friends.

“This must be one of those classic battles between good and evil,” said Brim as his team regrouped around him.

“Are you sure you boys and girls really wanna do this?” asked Tommy. “Why not just give up?”

“Yeah, I think we really wanna do this!” screamed the woman known as Red as she unleashed a stream of flame at the gathered group of heroes.

Everybody stood their ground and watched as the kid with the headphones moved forward and, with a smooth motion, switched the hard-rock music from his iPod into force blasts and created a powerful force field thanks to the sounds of classical music.

“Way to go, Mark,” Alani said.

“Not a problem,” Mark said as he kept the force field up. “As long as the music keeps playing I can keep this field up. What's our next move?”

“We tried it the easy way,” Tommy said as he looked back at the girl with blue hair and the giant rock teen. “Nori, Santo, time for a double team move.”

The rugged gray-rocked skinned young man looked at Nori and then at Tommy. “You thinkin’ fastball?” he asked curiously.

“Not this time buddy. We're gonna need a pop up on this one,” Tommy replied. “Nori, you know what to do once you’re up.”

“Don't worry about this, T, I got you covered,” Nori said with a slight Japanese accent. “Do it, big guy.”

The big man known as Santo linked his hands together and watched as Nori placed her foot in his hands. As they both started counting to five, Nori began opening the absorbtion panels in her gloves and started sucking in all the energy she could with in the few seconds she had. She nodded for Santo to toss her and a second later she was launched into the air. Once up there she unleashed a powerful blast of electricity from her gloves and sent it at the gathered group of thieves and especially the woman known as Red. The surge of power nailed Red and sent her to the ground in a smoking heap crackling with electricity.

Alani swept her arm in a circle on the floor and caused it to crumble opening a hole. “I'm ready,” she said toward Tommy.

“Go,” he shouted at her and then looked at the girl with metal skin. “Cessily, the ice woman is yours.”

“I'm on it,” she said as Mark dropped his force field. Taking off in a full sprint, Cessily Kincaid tackled the woman known as Blue to the ground, landing punches delivered by her living bio-metal fists.

“Santo, the big guy is yours,” Tommy ordered.

“A heavy weight match,” Santo said as he cracked his knuckles.

The two super heavy weights met in the middle of the room and gripped hands to see who could win in a show of strength.

Across the room the floor underneath the winged man began to crumble away and with in a few seconds he feel through to the room underneath. The sounds of a fight could be heard for a few minutes before everything went quite.

“Shadow guy’s mine,” Mark said as he switched his music from classical to a dance mix. Without saying a word, Tommy headed off towards the leader.

“You can't touch the shadows,” he said as he began to snicker and start to melt into the shadows.

“Thing about the shadows,” Mark began to say as the music really began to pound through his headphones. “They're nothing when you let your light shine bright!” he exclaimed as he let loose a blinding flash of light.

With the light illuminating the room, the shadow man had no shadows to escape through. Switching the music over quickly to his hard rock music he was able to unleash a powerful blast of sound that stunned his opponent, leaving him open for a hard left hook that was able to knock him out.

On the other side of the room the sound of Santos fist could be heard as he punched his large opponent in the stomach. Standing him back to an up right position Santo grabbed him around his throat, picked him up and then slammed him back down to the ground. Once on the ground, Santo then delivered a jumping elbow drop that due to the shear weight sent both combatants into the basement of the building.

“Looks like it's just you and me, you Quicksilver wannabe,” Brim said as he ported out of Tommys way.

“Look who's talking,” Tommy said as he watched the teleporter move around the room. “Your little trick screams Nightcrawler. But there's one thing that Mister Wagner did teach us,” Tommy said keeping a close eye on his opponent.

“And what's that?”

“That a teleporter tends to port the same path more then once,” Tommy explained as he waited for his opening. Once he found it he disappeared in a blur and landed a fast punch that, at the velocity it traveled, was enough to break the man’s nose a second after reappearing with in a puff of smoke and stench of brimstone.

---

About fifteen minutes later

Tommy and his friends had gathered the defeated thieves and had already restrained them while they were unconscious. Santo had the most fun as he had to drag not only the large thief but also the winged man and Alani, who rode on his shoulder, back upstairs to where everybody else was waiting.

“Wakey, wakey,” Tommy said as he crouched down near the man called Brim and slapped him several times. After a few minutes he finally began to stir. “So glad you could join us, Sunshine. Now, this is a game I like to call question and answer. In case you don't get the rules, I ask a question and you give me an answer.”

“You're getting nothing from me,” Brim said looking at Tommy.

Tommy looked at the man for a moment before standing up straight again. “You know, that's too bad,” he said with a small shake of his head, “because now I'm going to have to let my big friend here get the information that we need from you,” he continued as he looked back at Santo who had a grin on his face. “Last chance.”

“Go to hell kid,” the man said in response.

“Okay. Santo, if you would,” Tommy said moving away from Brim so the stone faced teen could do his thing.

“Okay, I'll talk,” Brim said a few seconds after Santo had picked him up into the air and was about to him him with a massive stone fist.

“Are you serious?” Santo asked disappointed. “I didn't get to hit him once.”

“Next time big guy,” Nori said as Santo dropped Brim back on the ground and took a step back.

Tommy walked back up and knelt down next to the man so he can be eye level with him. “So, starting from the top once again, and please remember that withholding the truth will just put you back in the loving hands of Santo here,” Tommy stated. “We know your powers aren't natural. So who's the person supplying your crew?”

“Some dealer up on the east side, goes by the name Pusher Man,” Brim explained.

“Pusher Man,” Alani said a little confused. “Never heard of him before, must be new in town. What else can you tell us?”

“Yeah, he's new, him and another guy have gone into business together,” he continued to explain. “Pusher deals with the drug trade and his partner, Zebra Daddy, deals with other forms of pleasure.”

“I don't like the way that sounds,” Mark commented. “So what do you wanna do with him now?”

“The cops are on their way,” said Cessily as she could hear sirens in the distance.

“Then he's their problem. But first,” Tommy said as he went through Brim’s pockets and pulled out a small vile of something and a cell phone. “I'll take these. I'm betting this is the source of his powers and this is how he gets his orders. Megan, we need a ticket home.”

“One portal coming up,” Megan said through a micro communicator.

“What are you going to do with those?” Alani asked as the group of mutant teens made their way out of the back of the building and to a waiting portal that would take them all home.

“I wanna see what the stuff in the vile is and where to find his boss,” Tommy replied. “And there are two people back at the school that can help answer both of those questions.”

---

---

To Be Continued...

Next: In New X-Men #2: For answers, Tommy is forced to bring in two other students into the fold but they're not the only ones, as Alani decides the team needs a few more recruits. And what happens when one of the teaching staff discover the existence of a new X team?

---

Previous Issue | Next Issue