[i]They say the Bomb was the explosion heard around the world. They say there was a Mushroom cloud like the Earth has never seen before. They say everything in sight of the damn thing literally turned to dust. They say it shook the very foundation of the world; literally, and figuratively. These are words representing sentiments that no one, none of 'them', have even fully wrapped their heads around. Let alone understand. If they're honest with you.

And 'they', those G-men, never are honest with you. I can tell you that from experience. But there's something else I can tell you from experience: It's the power of God, that bomb. 'The Bomb.' Americans are proud of it. Proud of wielding such a flaming sword during such a dark, desperate, time in the history of mankind. I'm not proud of it. I'm not satisfied about it. I helped make it possible. When the first one was set off in New Mexico, I woke up from a dead sleep hundreds of miles away in Los Angeles.

When the second one went off, the first released in hostility, I felt it sudden and sharp like my heart had skipped a beat. When the third one hit...I'll never admit it aloud, but I sat down and cried. I hope God can forgive me for what I've helped to bring into this world, because I'm just not sure I can ever forgive myself. That's why I'm here. That's why I left the only family I had left.

Because I can't trust these G-Men with what I helped to create. That's why[/i] [b]I[/b][i] had to become an X-Men.[/i]

[b]New York City, New York.
East Eight Street 'Marquee Theater'.
 April 26th, 1946. 08:00 AM.[/b]

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The projector was stuck, repeating the same clip from the same Universal Newsreel. It had been stuck for an hour now, ever since a few minutes after the girl in the blue jeans, sneakers, and faded baby blue plaid button up had entered into the theater from a back door; a shadow slipping into a room that was nothing but shadows against the brightly lit contrast of the large screen at the front of the room displaying the images and playing the sounds from the projector room above the auditorium itself. 

A few minutes into the newsreel that started with 'Breaking News!', introducing images taken from the very US Army Air Corps bomber that had flown the mission to the United States public for the first time, except for the girl that settled into the second row, in the very middle seat to get a seat front and center. To get a close look at the images she had, someway, somehow, seen before in her dreams. She had told herself that's all they were; dreams. But Estella Rey knew better. Someway, somehow.

She knew better.

After the first five minutes of the images on repeat, the few people also in the auditorium of the theater began to get restless. One white Italian young man craned his neck back, and gave the Projector Room a shout. "Yeah, I'm trying to fix it." Was the Projector Room's response. After another ten minutes, the Projectionist left the Projection Room, frustrated and mystified. He wouldn't be able to open the door to the Projector Room back up. The girl in the second row, middle seat, made certain of that as the black and white and shades of grey images kept on the screen before her; showering her face in shadow and light, a face that never once changed in expression or focus. 

Her eyes never left the screen, her face never waivering from the hard stare as the same images cycled again, and again. And again.

"Sorry folks, having technical difficulties. The gal at the box office will give a refund if you get tired of waiting."

The girl didn't move. Her eyes never so much as blinked, her only movement the thumb of her right hand slowly running over the silver rosary beads wound around the height of her hand twice over, held up at a slight angle, supported from the right elbow resting on the narrow wooden arm of the theater chair in which her body was slumped into. 

A black man waited thirty minutes of the same seconds long sequence of grainy video before finally allowing himself a deep, heavy, frustrated sigh and relucantly standing from his seat, and heading for the theater box office. The girl heard three other people in the morning theater crowd get up and walk out, muttering, complaining. Leaving her alone in the auditorium of the theater, in the second row, in the middle seat.

She even heard the the Projectionist trying to explain that the reel wouldn't dislodge from the projector, that he had no idea why the reel was repeating only the same seconds long sequence of images. That after coming down to make his announcement to the theater goers he couldn't get back inside the door. It wasn't locked, she thought she heard him tell his manager. It was just stuck. 

She thought she heard the manager of the theater call it 'creepy' that the newsreel was repeating the same images, again and again, considering just what the images were on the screen. The girl thought she heard that, but it was no more than a faint echo in the back of her mind like Southern California waves bouncing off the back wall of a Malibu oceanside cave. Distant, easily missed, especially with her focus so tightly on keeping the Projection Door stuck shut, on keeping the reel repeating this few seconds of video, and only these images before her on the screen. The pictures she'd seen in her dreams, seen whenever she closed her eyes. 

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[b]Salem Center, Westchester County, New York.
1407 Graymalkin Lane, Xavier Estate.
April 26th, 1946. 10:06 AM.[/b]

The day was blue and bright, not a single hint of clouds in the sky as the last traces of a morning chill were giving way to the easy warmth of the approaching noon hour. The man's Mansion bathed in the sunlight and the warmth as if the old house hadn't gotten nearly enough of either recently. New York was no Southern California, Estella had learned that harsh lesson just days before when she arrived at the house, a late spring snow dropping no more than an inch and a half of snow the color of angel wings over the Mansion and it's grounds. 

It was nothing, just a mild spring snow. "Likely the last of the year," one of the local train station attendants had told her that day, casual as he could be. For a girl who'd never seen snow before, there was nothing casual about it. There would be no mistaking New York for Southern California. Still there was a charm to the place; rolling hills covered in a thick canopy of green trees on either side of the Hudson River's banks, not that many miles to the east of the Estate grounds. Wooded hills that melted into grassy plain that was framed in by a thick woods as the grounds of the Xavier Estate started, grass a rich forest green in color even days after a spring snow. Not even a mile behind the Estate the manicured back lawns of the Mansion met the lake on Estate grounds. 

From hundreds and hundreds of feet into the late morning New York sky, Estella Rey could see it all below her, stretching into the horizon past where she could see as she floated high above the Mansion. Yesterday she'd set up her bedroom. She'd been fortunate to be one of the first girls to show up, being able to take a corner bedroom for her own. There was little by way of decoration or furniture in her room: a bed with simple dark wood stained footboard and headboard, a twin sized mattress inbetween. A small desk with a single drawer and wooden chair. A chest of drawers the same wood stain as the bed with a mid-sized mirror leaned against the wall atop it. 

There was a leather bound Bible on the desk, a half dozen opened letters addressed to her, and writing stationary with pens on the desk and a metal writing lamp. All of it, Xavier had provided. She told him she could provide her own things, but he wouldn't hear of it. That, or he knew just how Estella had gotten the money she'd brought with her, hidden in a place she was certain none would find it. 

Nor did the man seem to approve of her, a teenage girl, smoking cigarettes. She didn't smoke that many, but from time to time...she would. At first she'd consider smoking them near the lake, until she felt as if she was being watched even back towards the lake. So she had gone where she was certain she could get away from any one that might see her. The same place she had hid from gangsters, police, and US Army men before: she went to the sky. Dr. Oppenheimer had theorized she levitated herself using no more than magnetic forces, while the white wild haired old scientist, Albert, theorized that somehow she was breaking down the bonds of gravity to achieve her flight. Estella never said she felt like Oppenheimer was right. 

But that was only because all the other scientists said that Mr. Enstein didn't always take being called 'wrong' very well. Even if they had all said this in low voices, when they were certain Albert wasn't going to hear them. And, as one young scientist had told her, "Physics and the elemental forces of nature work in a way that most minds just don't naturally accept. It's counter-intuitive. And Mr. Enstein, you see, he's earned the benefit of the doubt with his intuition."

Estella finished the cigarette as her toes gently met the expansive back porch of the Mansion, her heels touching down half a heartbeat after. There was dread in her heart, and for once it had nothing to do with Oppenheimer, Enstein, or the rest of the scientists she'd spent so much time with. Xavier had given her fair warning that today was the day that most other 'students' would begin to show up. She wasn't sure how she'd react to other people like her. After having minds like Enstein put her natural, intuitive, powers in scientific framing, and explained to her what she was doing, even suggesting other uses and pushing her limits. Always pushing her limits. Always trying to see if she could focus down far enough, with enough detail, to tell them how close they were. To see if she could tell them how far they had left to go. 

They wanted the secrets of the universe from Estella Rey. Estella could only give them "hot or cold." Reading was the only thing that kept her mind off of it the thoughts of the men and their chalk boards and their 'quantum' and 'atomic' theories. If there was one thing Xavier's did not lack for, it was books. The library at the Mansion was expansive as it was massive. One of the scientists that kept in touch with her had suggested [i]The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha[/i], a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in his latest letter to her. A Spainish novel? That she could do.

[i]Now[/i], she thought as she stepped into the large library of Xavier's mansion, her eyes scanning what at times seemed an infinite array of book shelves filled to bursting [i]...if only I can find it here.[/i]