ROUGH GUIDE TO WHAT I'M RIPPING OFF:

Put simply, this is a crossover between Daria and the X-Men movie (I'd love to see other people's takes on this... hurry up and finish, Milo!). Put accurately, it's between those and the comics and cartoon series that ran awhile ago as well, based on information siphoned from the fountain of worthless knowledge we know as the internet. Since I'm mostly borrowing powers rather than personalities, I've listed the abilities of the mutants I'm "borrowing", will be borrowing in a followup, or am thinking of borrowing (why give anything away?) and exactly what a mutant is. Doesn't mean I'm telling you who's which -- why spoil it?

So what is a mutant, anyway?

I'll use the movie explanation (Hollywood pseudoscience), rather than the comics one (Marvel Science, read: fantasy which you can't fully understand unless you've been reading the books for about 20 years). Essentially, a mutant is a person who's had a little piece of their genome called the X-Factor play up, meaning they get some interesting and usually fairly unique ability (telekinesis, healing, thick orange fur, etc) and, naturally enough, ostracised by their non-mutant peers. Powers normally first manifest themselves on or about puberty (in Hollywood) or through that and/or contact with radioactive material (in the comics).

Mutants I've added to the list since Safest was released and people (read: Lew) started "broadening my horizons" re: potential mutations are highlighted.

Banshee: Has a scream which can shatter not just glass, but also brick, stone, concrete... oh yeah, can fly too.

Beast: The most intelligent X-Man/Person/whatever in the comics, and the best looking from a certain point of view. That point of view would have to deem a gorilla-like build and gait and thick blue fur as the epitome of male beauty.

Black Tom Cassidy: Able to produce blasts of flame from his hands and any convenient wooden instrument. Fun.

Blob: Big, fat, rounded, can absorb any and all inertia directed to it and convert it into strength.

Cable: Born in the future (long story which I don't know), chief "mutant" power is a wrist computer which allows him to travel through time. Also has latent abilities in the fields of telepathy and teleportation.

Colossus: Can turn his skin into a nigh indestructible form of liquid steel.

Cyclops: Wears a visor which shoots out a nice and destructive red laser-type beam. To put it another way, if he doesn't wear the visor or sunglasses with ruby-quartz lenses, he can't open his eyes for fear of doing serious damage to anything that happens to be in the way.

Feral:Catlike, with a tail, reactions of a small thunderbolt, and a hell of a temper.

Gambit: Can charge any inanimate object with kinetic energy, causing it to explode after a given time. Prefers to use playing cards in the comics, but it's been seen working on anything up to a small tree trunk, with the boom being proportionate to the object size.

Jean Grey: Telekinetic. (pause) She can move stuff round with her mind. What did you think it meant?

Jubilee: Can create explosive balls of plasma in her palms and throw them, varying in size and force from "low-budget fireworks" to "enough to make sbbeD .D very happy if aimed at Tom's head", these properties being partially dependent on her stress/fear level.

Magneto: Aka the Master of Magnetism. Hmmm, I wonder. Actually, he's not strictly a walking magnet, it's more like he has a refined telekinesis which only works on metals (no, not just iron).

Mystique: Not many males who've seen the movie know this, but she can shapeshift (into the form of another humanoid) at will. The reason they don't know is because they had a supermodel playing the part, and her costume was... shall we say... minimal. Blue bodypaint, mostly.

Professor X: Boss of the X-Men in the comics, wheelchair-bound. Very powerful telepath -- not only can he read minds, he can and does control them if necessary (one of the few good scenes cut in the final movie from the draft script floating 'round the net ATM had him make Mystique morph into a toddler).

Pyro: Self-explanatory. Can control fire with his mind. He can't actually ignite anything without a flame there to start off with, though once something's alight there's not much he can't do with it.

Rogue: Any skin-to-skin contact with another human being results in a cool visible-blood-vessel effect, and more to the point, the instant sapping of that human's "life force" (in the best tradition of Hollywood pseudoscience). Basically, she absorbs their memories and they fall into unconsciousness, a coma, or death, depending on how long the touch is for. If the person touched is a mutant, she gets their powers in the bargain, with the amount of time she holds onto them for varying. In the movie, she's just got this and a whole lot of vulnerability, in the comics, she can fly and has superyouknowwhat strength. I'm going with the movie -- more fun.

Sabretooth: Big, nasty human/lion-cross of a mutant.

Siryn:Refer Banshee.

Storm: Controls the weather. Eyes glow while she does it. Not much else to say, powers-wise. Since she's the only major black character in the movie, people have a habit of matching up Jodie to her, which to me makes about as much sense as giving Brittany's little brother the part because his hair's the right colour.

Toad: Can leap like one (causing serious damage to anything in the way where he lands), has a bloody long prehensile tongue, and thick green spit which hardens on contact. Fun.

Vertigo: Can "dazzle" with something in the optic nerve, upsetting people's balance and incidentally hypnotising the weak-minded (think Quinn with the three J's).

Wolverine: Can heal any wounds or diseases he gets almost instantly. And some sick-minded scientists (army-funded, of course) have taken advantage of this to plate his bones with "adamantium", a super-strong metal of the kind invented for comic books, plus sets of three retractable claws, coming out from between his knuckles. Oh, and they wiped his memory before the operation for good measure. The healing also negates the aging process. Sorry, Kara, Helen doesn't get this one.