Recon

Disclaimer #1: I am not, nor will I ever claim to be, an expert on X-Men, so I'm sure there are only about a million facts in here that are wrong. I beg your forgiveness. I had this story in my head and it had to get out, no matter who I offend .

Disclaimer #2: SLASH WARNING. BeastxOCxLogan. It starts a bit in the beginning, but it will get more graphic in later chapters. Mature readers only! If you're not all about the man-on-man action, you may not want to read this. Oh, and it might get a bit kinky…

Disclaimer #3: This is my first story. I know it rambles on more than it should, but this is how it wants to be written, and I can't help that. Please R&R, but cut me at least a teeeeny bit o' slack. 

Disclaimer #4: Characters, settings, and overall reality are copyright Marvel Comics, so purty please don't sue me.

Chapter 1

Most stories of mutants coming of age usually involve a hefty dose of tragedy, angst, isolation, and abandonment. Innocent people are killed, their family shuns them, fear drives them from their homes. Some have no memory of who they were or where they came from. Still others talk of the ways in which their abilities caused endless destruction and pain. When their powers begin to manifest, typically around puberty, the stories are bleak, and they arrive at the school to find refuge from the cold, harsh lives they have fallen into.

Not me. My tale of discovering my mutation is really very uneventful. It wasn't until I had been at Xavier's school that the angst and isolation set in.

I was twelve when I started to notice the change in me. My eyes, which had been a deep brown, became snow white almost overnight. I had always had strong eyesight, but I began to notice that if I concentrated, I could see objects very closely, like I had built-in binoculars. At first, I couldn't do it for very long without getting a headache. However, as my eyes began to lose their color, my ability grew. I was able to zoom in on objects from hundreds of yards away in amazing detail and stability. Before long, I learned how to see right down to the atomic level. My pupils began to shift from round to a sort of four pointed scroll, which opened up to engulf my entire eye when my ability was in full use. Of course, it didn't take too long for my parents to figure out there was something going on.

Let me explain something about my folks; my parents are intellectuals in every sense of the word. Both are PhD's and lecture at an uncounted number of universities around the country. My mother's specialty is philosophy and religion, while my father's passion is social psychology and cultural anthropology. Needless to say, my childhood was filled with culture, deep discussions at the dinner table, and a never ending parade of the greatest minds in the world for dinner parties, holidays, and pretty much any other occasion they could conjure up. I guess this would explain why their reaction to my mutation was far more progressive than most of my classmates.

The day my mother walked in on me staring off into the distance with my eyes completely black, she was taken aback, for sure. Despite her shock, she calmly sat down on my bed next to me and put her arm around my shoulders. This, of course, startled the piss out of me and snapped me back out of my vision. She surveyed my now snow-white eyes and scrolled pupils with the intensity she normally reserved for her academics.

"Alex," she said softly, "tell me what you saw."

So I told her. Everything.

Once my parents had learned their son was a mutant, they knew my life was destined for a different path than they had planned, to say the least. Still, they were educated, and they understood the mutant movement that was happening within society. My father had spent the last few years researching the effect of mutants on social evolution. It was through those studies that he had developed a friendship with a certain Professor Charles Xavier.

I had seen Professor Xavier over at the house before, but only from afar at one of the many fundraising dinners my father organized, so when I came downstairs to find him in our sitting room, I knew immediately who he was. My father had told me of his mission and his school, and I understood why he was there, alone, and waiting to talk to me.

"Hello, Alex," he said with that smooth, upper-class British baritone I would come to know so well. "I am Professor Charles Xavier."

He reached out his hand and I shook it gracefully, yet firmly, just as my parents had taught me. This was far from my first time meeting a man of power.

"I know of you and your work, Professor Xavier," I replied as I took a seat in a large, padded leather chair next to his deceptively simple wheelchair. "It is an honor to meet you, Sir."

He smiled warmly, and I could sense he was a man who possessed far more power than that of wealth, knowledge, or prestige. In fact, I could almost see actual waves of energy emanating from within him. They were barely tangible until I really focused on them, then they seemed to grow stronger until I was almost blinded by their radiance. My vision suddenly shifted, as if I were seeing a whole different wavelength of light.

The Professor then said something I would soon hear very, very often.

"Tell me what you are seeing, Alex."

And that's how I became a student of the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. Within a week I had packed my things, bid my few close friends farewell, and was stepping foot into the greatest adventure, the greatest pain, the greatest joy, and the greatest destiny that I could have ever imagined.

See? No one died, no one abandoned me, no destruction was wrought, no sorrow or angst consumed me. Really, a pretty boring mutant revelation story. Hardly worth telling, really, considering my future held far more interesting tales. Still, it's important to know where I began in order to understand where I am now.

Once the Professor and the others at the Institute studied my mutation, it became clear to all of us the ways in which I could become a vital resource to the X-Men team. Still, I was only thirteen when I arrived, and in need of many years of education and development. Despite that fact, I could tell the X-Men had set plans in motion for my future.

There were two ways my extraordinary visual powers could be put to the best use. Since I was essentially a human microscope, even beyond most of the machines of the day, a natural place for me would be in a scientific and research environment. Science certainly interested me, seeing as I had become a geek long before a mutant, so when Jean Grey brought that point up, I was eager to follow that path.

On the other hand, my abilities also had the potential for making an ideal reconnaissance operative during combat missions. With my ability to not only see great distances, beyond the most sophisticated scopes in the arsenal, but also see quite possibly every type of wave form in existence, I could make the ultimate recon and detection agent. While never raised in any kind of environment even remotely related to anything military or, for that matter, particularly athletic, the idea of someday becoming a master recon man for a team like the X-Men set my young mind racing with excitement.

I remember the day I sat in Professor Xavier's study to discuss my place at the Institute. Jean Grey and Storm were there with the Professor himself, and each one of them took turns at length discussing the merits and risks of each path. Storm, I sensed, was eager to put me to active use on the team someday, but Miss Grey and the Professor seemed to prefer the scientific route. None of them overtly pushed me one way or the other, but I could tell.

It was all too much for me, really. I mean, there I was, thirteen years old, discovering I had these incredible powers, put into a new world with these strange and exotic mutants, and having to decide what the hell I wanted to be when I grew up. Xavier, being Xavier, tried to put it into perspective for me.

"Alex," he said as he directed his wheelchair from behind his desk and rolled quietly to my side, "I know your father very well. I promised Dr. Rieger that you would have the best guidance and education that this institute and I could offer. I know this is so much for you to take in, and you're still so young."

He leaned in slightly and looked me in the eye. I hardly knew this man, really, and yet I believed him. I believed in him. He understood what was happening to me. Hell, he'd been dealing with kids like me for longer than I'd been alive, practically. I trusted him. All three of them. It still didn't make it any easier to decide my fate. Or did I have to decide?

"Do I have to choose one or the other?" I asked as I looked at each of them in turn. "I mean, couldn't I do both?"

For a moment there was silence as each one of them pondered the question. Jean Grey, looking impossibly beautiful in a simple, elegant way, and Storm, with her striking white hair and mocha skin shimmering with grace and regality, both seemed to smile slightly and looked at the Professor as if to say "What do we do with this one?"

It was Jean Grey who spoke up first.

"Alex," she said carefully and kneeled down next to me opposite the Professor, "do you understand what you're asking? Either option means a lot of work, training, and focus if you want to be part of the team someday. The reason you need to decide this now is so we can start you off in the right direction as soon as possible. Doing both would be…" She struggled for the right words to convey the complexity of what I was suggesting.

"Well within this boy's potential," Xavier said simply with a smile. "You are asking for a lifetime of work, young man, but I think, if you truly want to take both paths with your abilities, you will become extraordinary." His eyes were alive with fire at the possibilities, which sort of scared the living crap out of me. "The road will be long, my friend."

"But you won't be on it alone," said Storm with an air of determination. "You will have all of us right here with you. You are part of our family now, Alex, and every one of us is committed to you."

At that moment, in the middle of all this newness and excitement and uncertainty and God-knows-what-the-hell-is-going-to-happen-to-me, I felt at peace. I felt…like I was home. Sure, it was a home full of people who could walk through walls, hurl ice, shoot energy beams from their eyes, control the weather, and move things with their minds, but still…it was the greatest place in the world to me at that moment. I was ready to move into a world I scarcely understood but wanted desperately to embrace.

"So I guess I should unpack my stuff, then, and get started, huh?"