Something Wicked This Way Comes

[Spectre]

April 14th, 1998
Salem, Massachusetts

The season was just beginning for the vendors of the Salem community. The months between the end of October - more to the point the tourism profit that being in 'The Witch City' brought in, and the traffic of the beach going crowd of Spring and Summer were always difficult for small business owners. Couple to that being only fifteen, having your mother fading away in a nursing home and your father drowning his sorrows with a bottle instead of paying the mortgage, and it made for a very stressful half a year.

She didn't really want to spend her days sitting around talking to any stranger she could lure over for a 'psychic consultation'. Technically speaking she wasn't really old enough to work. Jocelyn had put together a little cart, painted on one side with a hand bearing the artfully drawn lines of palmistry, and on the other an all-seeing eye. Since she was harmless enough, the official stance on her was to treat her cart like a slightly more profitable kids lemonade stand. If she drew crowds, the more renowned area psychics shooed her away. So she had learned to stay close to home, and the house on the beach.

A couple was coming now! Alternately talking and munching out of a red and white striped box of popcorn. Jocelyn's stomach rumbled at the smell, but she still had another hour or so of daylight before she would close up and go home for the night. She swished the length of her bell-adorned, red skirt around, the soft jingling drawing their attention.

"Would you like me to determine your compatibility?", Jocelyn smiled, spreading out a deck of Rider Tarot cards in front of her.

"How much?", the woman, a pretty red head asked suspiciously. "We already know we're compatible."

"I only work for tips! If you enjoy the reading, you can show your appreciation.", she tapped the little glass jar half way filled with single dollar bills.

"Sure kid.", the man sat down in the folding chair opposite Jocelyn's, pulling the redhead onto his lap. "Show us what you've got."

Jocelyn went on to tell them how she had seen in the cards the giving of a gift of love. About how one of them was going to be getting a newer, better job when they got home from vacation. About how soon they would be buying a place together, with an additional bedroom.

It was what they wanted to hear. They had only just that morning discussed the possibility of marriage, Jocelyn knew. Dazzled with her apparent insight, the man reached into his wallet and pulled out a five-dollar bill, or so he thought. "Thanks, kiddo. Keep it up. You're the best we've encountered so far in this spooky city."

"Will do!", Jocelyn promised, pocketing the hundred-dollar bill that she'd seen him skim past, only to suddenly go back for. "You two have a wonderful stay here in Salem!"

When they walked away, Jocelyn grinned. Well, they may make the mortgage yet, if she kept this up!

[Saladin]

Restlessness and resentment had brought Hektor Vespasian to the Massachusetts coast. It was a journey that never really had a destination or even really a direction. The purpose was in the wandering, in turning the earth beneath his feet, in distancing himself from the ties he'd just severed at the Cullen's Institute for the Gifted.

Not a year had passed since the assassination of Dr. Gregory Cullen, one of the finest scientific minds the human race had ever produced, and the foremost advocate of mutant rights. It had taken a lone gunman the work of seconds to destroy the most powerful voice for human-mutant cooperation, and with it, Dr. Cullen's dream of a new era of progress ushered by the gifts evolution had bestowed upon the human race.

The man who'd given the world stunning advances in computer technology, biomedicine, physics, genetics, sociology, even art and philosophy, who promised an even more bountiful harvest in the autumn years of his life - cures for deadly diseases, solutions to the energy crisis, revolutions in food production, water management, communication, education - had been cut down in a mindless act of prejudice and hate. No other species could possibly be so devoted to its own destruction as humanity. So why couldn't Ethan see it?

The eternal sameness of the American Interstate system gave one plenty of room to air one's thoughts. He had followed 95 up the New England coast out of New York, and, as the afternoon wore out and faded into the evening, he found himself within a few miles of Salem. Somehow it seemed appropriate.

New England was the closest America could come to Old World charm, and yet even here the colonial architecture had been turned into a carnival marketplace, hundreds of vendors raising their prices in anticipation of the oncoming tourist season. Hektor, dressed in slacks and a charcoal pullover, turned down a lane still busy even as the bay was cast into shadow by the setting sun. He walked by a gaudy storefront hawking crystals, amulets, herbal miracles, and meditation aids, baubles that purported to help you discover your inner power. The irony was toxic.

Hektor moved on, and he would have entirely overlooked the teenaged girl minding her small cart had she not spoken to him.

[Spectre]

Last mark of the evening. A brooding stranger that looked more disgusted than entertained with the standard wares of the Salem shops. There was something about the man that drew Jocelyn's attention like a lump of metal to a lodestone. He was definitely not from around here, she would have remembered him. Her bright green eyes followed him as he approached. He was obviously lost in his own thoughts, not even seeing the shirt that the vendor across from Jocelyn was flapping about at him, a black tee with a witch flying on a broom, Salem: Stop by for a Spell! He was almost upon her now, and timing was everything..

"The present obviously offends you and with good reason, but the future is yours to create..", she said with a somber tone, one that had hooked and reeled in other customers.

"A better future.." Looking up from the deck of cards still spread out before her, she held her breath hoping he would stop.

[Saladin]

The girl's voice pulled him out of his brooding like an angler's hook. Hektor turned to look at her, a pale, willowy creature with unusually light hair and striking green eyes, presiding over her cart of parlor tricks like a young Cassandra. She played the part of the oracular waif so well it was obvious she'd been coached.

"And you would have insight into that future?" he asked. His accent was broad, European, and difficult to identify.

[Spectre]

"I may see all kinds of things..", she gestured to the seat across from her. In truth, she had no precognitive skill at all, she just had an uncanny ability to peek inside people and tell them what they wanted to hear most.

Further sweetening the bait, she brushed through his thoughts, quickly pulling out important names that seemed to be lit up light neon. She turned a card around to face his side of the table, The High Priestess. "This one calls herself... Fancy? No.. That's not right.", Jocelyn frowned and seemed to be forcing the name out of the ether. "Fran..?"

She was supposed to be hooking the fish, not being caught up by it, but this guy.. She'd seen glimpses of intentions within his thoughts. Things that seemed to echo her own juvenile opinions. There were two kinds of people in this world, those who were 'normal' and those who were extraordinary, like herself. "Soon... a reckoning.", she hadn't meant to say the last out loud, she'd only been thinking it.

[Saladin]

Fran?

Hektor had been regarding the girl as a subject of idle curiosity, possibly of pity. But now his blue eyes focused on her with a singular intensity. He had thought, for a moment, that he had felt something, like a tugging of delicate fingers filtering through this thoughts. If it weren't for Fran, he never would have recognized it.

Hektor slid smoothly down into the folding chair across from her. "A reckoning, you say? What sort of reckoning?"

He filled his head with memories - the gunshot ringing across a New York City auditorium, the roiling chaos of the gene riots at Gladsheim University, the mission he and the other X-Men had undertaken freeing mutant child soldiers in Somalia - images of the wars between humans and mutants that were to come. He watched the girl carefully for her reaction.

[Spectre]

Damn, she hadn't meant to say that and now she was stuck elaborating on it. Stalling for time, Jocelyn sifted her graceful fingers through the cards before her again, while her mind likewise sifted through whatever thoughts were foremost on the man's mind. She had expected to see more on this 'Fran' person. What she found, she was not prepared for..

There was a peculiar feeling in the pit of her stomach, the kind you get when you are at the top of the big hill on a roller-coaster about to speed down the other side whether you want to or not. The decision has been taken from you, and you fall.. Her hands gripped the table, knuckles turned white with the grip she had on the solid surface. She was powerless to stop the images that besieged her mind. She couldn't pull back from them suddenly. People like her being hunted because of what they were. Kids in collars being made into slaves. Violence. Death. Pain. Fear. Unending, unrelenting..

A single drop of bright red blood splashed from her nose onto the back of her pale hand. It jolted her back to what was really going on. The smell of popcorn and the sea. The sounds of a witch trial reenactment nearby. And the man before her.. Jocelyn lowered her head as she wiped at her nose, blinking the pain from behind her aching eyes.

"No more.. please. I don't know anything." She pushed the deck of cards into a pile and shoved them into a velvet pouch tied with a drawstring, obviously about to bolt, tipped or no.

[Saladin]

Immediately Hektor realized he'd overdone it - he'd underestimated how deftly this girl could slip into his mind. Against all odds, he'd discovered a mutant child in full command of her abilities, and he was perilously close to frightening her off.

"Wait... please, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have shown you that."

He resisted the urge to bolt up out of his seat - he didn't want become tall and imposing. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, which he carefully stretched out toward her.

[Spectre]

Jocelyn was about five seconds from saying the hell with her cart and running all the way home. What stopped her was not his apology, but the statement that he had 'shown her' those images. Still scared silly but now also morbidly curious, she snatched the handkerchief quickly from him and pressed it to her face self consciously.

"You showed me? Are you..", she looked around making sure no one was paying them any attention, they weren't. "Are you, like me then..?" Jocelyn didn't know exactly what she was, she just knew what she could do, what she had no choice but to do.

[Saladin]

The air between them was electric. Hektor could see the girl was still prepared to run, still terrified by the images he had shared with her, but something, as if by magnetic attraction, was holding her here, just as something had drawn him from the seat of his disgrace in Westchester to this very spot. He studied the girl with fascination, blue eyes and green eyes locked together.

"My talents," he said, "are different from yours. But yes. I, along with many others, am more like you than any of this mundane rabble."

He held up one of his broad hands and turned it over so she could see that it was empty. And then, with a careless turn of his wrist, he shot out a thin, undulating line of green light from his palm to the velvet pouch on the cart, enveloping the pouch in a soft, emerald glow. The pouch floated gently into the air, and the drawstring the girl had tightened slowly began to unravel, and out of it rose three cards: the Magician, Judgment, and the World.

[Spectre]

She supposed she looked a bit green, her mouth agape in a shocked expression. Yeah, for sure she'd lived in Salem around spooky witches and purported psychics her whole life, but Jocelyn had certainly never seen anyone shoot out lasers from their hands and lift anything before!

"Whoa...", that was all she could manage at first. Tentatively she reached out and plucked the three cards from the air, resting them down before her for interpretation once more.

"The Magician.. he holds everything in balance, all of the powers of the other cards. That's you. Isn't it..?" She wasn't really asking. It was more something she sensed, even though she was no empath or psychic counselor.

"Judgement and The World.", she tapped each, then looked back up once more, more maturity in her bright green eyes than her young years proclaimed. "This is part of the bright future you want.."

[Saladin]

The green light faded as the girl took the cards.

"Yes," Hektor said. "A reckoning... a rebirth. The world is being remade by the likes of you and me. But the images you saw... there are people who want to stop it from happening. People who will stop at nothing to extinguish all our... special talents."

From across the street in the witch trial reenactment, a costumed parson announced in an overblown voice: "Whereas the accused persons were severally arraigned on indictments for the horrible crime of witchcraft, and whereupon they were each of them found and brought in guilty by the jury, so this council commands and requires that they be delivered to the place of execution and there be hanged by the neck until dead, so that their blight may be expunged from their Majesties' colonies."

Hektor held the girl's eyes. There was hardly a need to explain more here, now - their surroundings explained well enough.

"Your gift is extraordinary," he said. "It is wasted on these tourist cattle. How long have you been able to do this?"

[Spectre]

This little 'gift' of hers had been the best thing that had happened to Jocelyn in a long time, and had come to her exactly when she had needed it. That was why she considered it a gift. She would not let anyone extinguish it from her. Ever.

"Well.. about a year ago Mom got sick, and Dad.. he still isn't dealing with it very well. So I figured some of these vendors are the legitimate, authentic real deal, right? Well some of them are not, and they get away with it. How hard could it be to make a few dollars off tourists? So, I began just reading palms and tarot."

Jocelyn shuffled the deck of cards in her fingers and lay them out in a specific pattern across the tabletop. "I didn't actually think I would be guided by fortunes hand, but.. it seemed like I was. I just knew things."

[Saladin]

"I'm sure you did." Hektor smiled in admiration - everywhere, even in this raucous marketplace, the will of evolution was to seek advantages and use them. Her resourcefulness was to be commended.

"You've shown me that you have the ability to sense other people's thoughts. That's real psychic power, not like these frauds with their incense and costumes and incantations. There may be more to your gift than that, but only you could say for certain."

He leaned forward. "My name is Hektor. Hektor Vespasian. What's your name?"