They've only been able to gather a handful of new students in the months since Erik's betrayal.

Charles finds the first two in a rundown little cabin surrounded by dense forest and perhaps rundown is too weak a word. It has no door and all but two of the windows are shattered and he can clearly see long grass and vines growing through and around the rotting wood of its walls. The only thing he hears is rustling leaves and distant chirps and just as he's about to reach out with his mind there's an arrow flying towards him.

Clint Barton, seventeen years old, who in the first few months of his mutation's complete manifestation couldn't keep his eyes from focusing on every miniscule detail of anything he saw -the hairs on a fly's leg as it buzzed about his room, a loose thread in the filthy grey sock wrinkled just off the side of the road a hundred meters down the highway.

He lifts his hand, stopping the sloppily carved arrow and letting it fall to the ground. Once he's managed to convince Clint that he isn't there to harm, the obviously exhausted teen steps out of the cabin with a ratty wooden bow in hand and a small redhead at his back.

Natasha Romanov, fourteen, the most venomous of known creatures on the planet. She hadn't let her fear paralyse her like the accidental bite to her dentist's finger had him, and only once she was well away did she break and cry and empty her stomach with the image of the assistant's half digested hand burned into her mind.

They choose the names Hawkeye and Black Widow for each other and insist on sharing a room and Charles knows better than to protest.

The third comes with a blinding pain in his chest easily twice as bad as the one that tore through his spine and a sound like a cracking whip as soon as he curls a tendril of their minds together. The boy -no, man despite his seventeen years and mask of immaturity- is half Erik's age and already just as strong, already knows how he could control a person with the very iron in their blood despite never having done it.

His name is Tony Stark and his father is the worst kind of scum, the personification of the very reason Erik hates the normal humans. He hates his son even before his mutation reveals itself but notices the way metal moves to protect Tony -not against his will, but like it has a mind of its own when he's in danger- and decides to cut him open.

The team arrives minutes too late. A mass of metal has begun to graft itself to the bleeding hole in his chest, forming a barrier between a sluggish heart and the sterile lab air. Back at the mansion and fully conscious, he tries and fails to melt it away.

He names himself Iron Man and pretends the nightmares don't keep him awake for days on end.

Then comes a large black wolf with a sleeping blond on its back, a shape shifter who snarls when Charles and Hank pull his brother away that they easily interpret as a threat of bodily harm if they injure or even wake him. Hank's fur stands straight, sticking to clothes and skin as electricity crackles through it. The blond's mind sounds like thunder and when he shifts back the emaciated brunet curls around him in the large bed, careful not to disturb their respective I.V. lines.

True or not, the names in their minds are Thor and Loki and they're drenched in such history and affection that Charles has a hard time believing they aren't. When the nineteen and twenty year old wake their names become double.

Last comes a sixteen year old, locked away in a military facility. One brush against his mind has Charles' heart pounding, torn between a green tinted haze of fury and slow, desperate sadness. Everything is pain and emptiness and wanting to die before one of Sean's gentler shrieks snaps him out of it and he realizes that he's crying.

Alex or Clint blasts a hole through the wall or maybe it's both and Natasha's own fury -but not green no hers is more red and bendy and acidic and Charles jerks his mind away- prompts her to spray a sizable amount of venom into General Ross' eyes. One twist of Thor's lightning through the building cuts all power and the trembling body of Bruce Banner drops from the ceiling. Chains and rope are coiled around him but have gone slack and the multiple I.V.'s pulling free leave him bloody.

His eyes go green and they rush to get him out, take him as far as they can before he transforms. It's not his mutation but it comes from it and Charles can't seem to find what it is and isn't that curious.

Tony ignores them all and jumps after the hulking green teen, throwing messy balls and sheets of metal in all directions for him to smash.

Bruce calms down but is still green when Tony floats himself up to wind his arms around wide shoulders and press their foreheads together and when Charles slides up against his mind there's less anger but still all he knows is a swampy haze.

Tony names him Hulk and no one is surprised when it takes less than a day for him to move all his things into Bruce's room.

-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-

I realize that some things might not make complete sense (mostly because of the writing style) so if you need me to clear anything up, feel free to ask (:

I might end up making this into a full story, or maybe I'll just write snippets from various points in time. I really have no idea so far, I just couldn't get this out of my head.