The following is Earth 467, which answers some questions I've always had about the X-men, put them in places I've always wished I could see them go, and gives them an opportunity to shine away from any other X-Men. With the exception of a few characters, these are mostly solo stories. Because the X-Men were never formed in this reality.
I have created a timeline that extends from 1825 to 1998. It's not one story... it's a story that follows all the X-Men in their own realities.
A word to the wise: none of the characters are the age they are in 616, or even the relative age to the rest of the characters. I made them whatever age I needed them to be to work on this. Also, mutants develop their power at the very beginning of puberty somewhere around 11-12 in 467.
None of this is in chronological order. So I begin with August to November of 1998, at the very end.
Hippocratic Oath
(August 1998)
Hank McCoy knelt with his abnormally large hands on his head in the center of the square. Police were directing protesters and spectators away from the area, desperately trying to keep them from seeing what was about to happen.
Pigeons were blissfully ignorant of the situation, pecking closer and closer to the place where Hank knelt with a gun pressed against the back of his neck.
“Please,” Hank said, his voice thick with fright and sadness, “I’m a doctor. I swore never to take a life. I’m not like the other mutants.”
“Sorry,” the soldier said, “I’m just following orders.”
The gunshot startled the pigeons; they flew up into the air in chaos.
Mind Over Matter
(August 1998)
Jean Grey heard the director of the asylum open the door. “She’s in there,” she heard him say. In his head, he thought, Thank god we won’t have to deal with her anymore.
The man entered. Jean read in his mind what he was going to do, and she screamed, struggling against her bonds and desperately trying to get into his brain, to destroy it any way she could.
But she felt the prick of the needle entering her skin, and was left to wonder whether God let mutants in heaven as her heart beat slower and slower and then stopped.
Goddess’s Blessing
(September 1998)
Ororo flew through the air with ease, calling the winds to her aid. Normally, she would be flying over the village to see how the people were doing, to check the crops and see if they needed water. Today, she was fighting for her life.
Armies had arrived with tanks and guns, just to kill her. Ororo had thought many times about simply turning herself in, but each time the villagers who depended on her for rain and protection refused to allow it. Now she felt as though she was condemning them just as well as herself, watching the peasants attempt to defend her against machines and lasers with simply spears and shields.
She had been watching her people, not the tanks, and so was quite surprised when the bullet went straight through her chest and sent her tumbling to the ground.
Pinioned
(September 1998)
Warren Worthington III heard the creak of the floorboards and the mutterings of soft voices below him. He’d been hiding in the attic for weeks now, wishing that he’d had the courage to allow his father to surgically remove his wings when all this trouble had first started.
Too late now. Warren heard many feet coming up the stairs and rushed into the wardrobe, taking the key and locking it from the inside. People had come before to find him but the tale of the antique locked wardrobe had usually been enough.
There was a knock on the door. It was his father’s special knock. Warren got out of the wardrobe and went to the door, wondering who his father could have possibly brought up to see him.
Behind the door stood a soldier with his gun trained on the spot between Warren’s eyes. Warren’s father shouted, “I’m sorry, son!” as the soldier pulled the trigger to shatter Warren’s beautiful, betrayed face.
Family Ties
(September 1998)
Sam Guthrie held his littler sister’s head against his chest. “Hush, Melody,” he said, “It’s gonna be all right.”
Paige, one of his other sisters, looked at him with complete disbelief, and his little brother Jay just stared morosely.
“We can get through this,” Sam insisted, trying to instill them with the courage and bravery to go on.
“That’s the army out there, Sam,” Paige said, “They’ve got guns.”
“And tanks,” Jay added, flapping his red wings.
“Face it, brother,” Paige said, leaning against the wall, “We’re dead.”
Sam handed the sobbing Melody to Paige. “What are you doing?” Paige asked.
“Take care of her,” Sam replied. Then he shot through the window and streaked for the tanks encamped around their hiding place.
It was a desperate suicide mission, but he was gonna go through with it. He crashed into the one tank, blowing a hole through its side and igniting the gas tank. One after another the tanks exploded, but to Sam’s horror he saw a soldier throw a grenade through the window he had left.
“No!” Sam shouted, furiously shooting toward the offender. Sam threw him to the ground and began punching him.
Sam didn’t see the soldier behind him, didn’t even hear the shot as the bullet whistled towards his head. He only felt the pain before oblivion.
Seeing Red
(October 1998)
Scott Summers ran down the alley, jumping over trash cans and across puddles filled with slime. His breathing sounded ragged and hoarse, even to himself. But he could barely hear anything over the harsh pounding of his temples.
This wasn’t the usual squadron of police, after him for thievery. No, this was the United States Army, and they were after him because he was a mutant.
A dead end. Scott pressed up against the wall and turned around, watching them come at him. If Kitty showed up in the next few seconds, he might make it.
The guns clicked ominously. Kitty was too late now.
Scott tore off his glasses and swept them all in a defiant beam of high-energy blasts as eleven bullets tore through his head and chest.
Walking on Air
(October 1998)
Kitty Pryde phased through the bullets that roared around her, still holding her precious bag. She slipped silently through a wall, treading on air.
She had the money. It had been easy to get it from the register without even opening it. No alarms had gone off, and yet the army was there, shooting at her. How they had got there, Kitty didn’t ask and didn’t want to know.
Kitty phased through another wall. She could still hear guns and explosions. But all she had to do now was get to Scott and then everything would be all—
Kitty’s solid foot activated the land mine, and then it was too late to phase.
Russian Roulette
(October 1998)
Piotr Rasputin awoke at 3:38 a.m. Moscow time for no reason he could discern. There was simply something wrong with the house, and he felt uncomfortable. He got up out of bed slowly, planning to go and find out what was happening.
His wife Natasha woke up and touched his arm. “What is it, Piotr?” she asked.
“Just getting a drink of water,” he told her, kissing her forehead, “Go back to sleep, darling.”
First Piotr checked the room of his two-month-old daughter. No, she was fine, sleeping peacefully. He brushed his hand against her cheek, smiling at the fine features that were so like her mother’s. Then he went into the sitting room to see if the problem was there.
There was something in the room that had not been there before. A large, metal object. A large, metal object with a blinking red light that was ticking quietly.
Piotr had no time to do anything before the bomb exploded. His last thoughts were for his wife and child. He hoped they would not suffer.
Can’t Touch This
(November 1998)
The girl who referred to herself only as Rogue stood in the center of a ring of policemen, her hands bared and held like dangerous weapons. “Y’all trying to catch me?” she asked, “Go on. Try to touch me.”
A policeman tried to smack her with a billy club. Rogue’s hand shot up and touched his face. The policeman stared in agony a minute before passing out unconscious.
“Y’all want another go?” she asked, “Ah can see y’all are up fer it.”
Then the policemen parted suddenly, and Rogue found herself confronted by a solid wall of army troops.
This was her cue to leave. She ducked and rolled towards them, planning on running under their guns and touching their ankles to disorient them and catch them off guard.
She hadn’t reckoned on the sniper on the fourth floor window.
Kinetic
(November 1998)
Remy LeBeau was throwing cards left and right. The army soldiers were falling like bird droppings, but they were many and they were still coming. The black-eyed boy felt that they were an oncoming tidal wave.
When he ran out of cards he started throwing tin cans, bottles, trash, anything he could find. But they kept coming closer and closer, and soon Remy was out of things to throw.
He refused to beg for mercy as the guns pointed towards him. Instead, he held his chin in the air. This was one twelve-year-old mutant who was going to die like a man.
How it Snowballed
(November 1998)
No way was Bobby Drake gonna let them catch him. The minute he knew that they would come after him he’d run away. No sense making his parents pay for the fact that he was a mutant.
They probably thought he’d gotten into trouble and called the police. Bobby was pretty certain that by now a little DNA testing had proven to his nice-but-ignorant parents what he really was. There was no going home now.
But New York City, he’d discovered, was the place to go if you were a mutant. Because deep underneath the sewers there was a whole community.
Bobby had come to Manhattan Island with absolutely nothing, thinking that he’d sleep in a park someplace. It wasn’t too long before the hidden community sought him out, and brought him deep underground where it was safe.
Well, had been safe.
Right now, Bobby was doing everything in his power to keep it that way.
An attacking foot soldier was encased in a block of ice at a flick of Bobby’s hand. He’d held back tanks with chunks stuck in the treads and frozen the metal of machine guns until past their stress points, causing them to shatter when used. In fact, he was feeling pretty sure of himself.
Suddenly, the army retreated. Bobby and his friends within the underground mutant community grinned and shouted in triumph. They’d won!
But then a strange smell filled Bobby’s nostrils. Somewhat like gasoline, only not quite. It took him a while to realize what it was, why the army had retreated, even why they’d blocked up all entryways.
It was napalm.
[Edited on 14/8/2009 by steyn]