starbound - scomiche

001. flight

☆

From the day he was born, Mitch Grassi knew he was destined for something bigger than this world.

He's always been different. The odd child, the weirdo, the one no one liked. The kids in his class called him Radioactive Boy, and forced him to sit in the corner away from everyone else. The teachers kept their mouths shut -- they thought the same thing. No one was supposed to be like Mitch. He must have been in a chemical accident.

Mitch wasn't radioactive. He was just born with it.

His mother told him his gift was a blessing, but Mitch knew it was a curse. If having powers were a blessing, then why would everyone single him out for it? If he was destined to do wonderful things with his abilities, then why wasn't he allowed to use them? If he could use them to make the bullies just stop, to turn the bullies into the bullied for just one day, then why did he get slapped when he did?

Mitch didn't know. All he knew was that these powers were made for something bigger than himself; bigger than this planet. His mother didn't understand, the students in his classes didn't understand, and hell, even Mitch didn't understand. But there was something out there for him, something outside of Earth, because there had to be.

The stories he surrounded himself were bullshit. There were no schools his parents could ship him off to to hone his skills. There was no secret government facility that would abduct him and experiment on him. And there was most certainly no league of superheroes with powers just like him. Mitch was alone in this, and he'd accepted it. He was the only person on this entire planet with telekinesis, and it would remain that way. He would just submerge himself in comic books and movies, and pretend he was in X-Men, and he was a Guardian of the Galaxy.

It only singled him out more.

Puberty never quite came for him like it was supposed to. He was promised a growth spurt, for his figure to broaden, for his voice to drop from its melodious chime to something more masculine. But it never happened. Sure, his voice dropped, but not as far as it should have. He never grew a beard. His figure stayed slender and feminine, like his hormones just didn't know which way was up. He felt like he was supposed to be born a girl, because he liked boys and nice smelling candles and makeup and there was no doubt that he looked like one, too.

So he embraced his femininity, because Mitch loved himself and he would work with what he had. He would paint his nails, he would straighten and shave his hair, he would define every feature on his otherworldly face that made even the straight boys swoon, because he was different, and he was glad that he was different. He became a charmer, and even though the people who knew his radioactive secret were nasty to him, he got whatever he wanted from strangers.

Needless to say, high school was a disaster, simply because he'd accepted himself. Mitch, The Radioactive Kid. Mitch, The Comic Book Nerd. Mitch, The Faggot. Mitch, The Reject.

He didn't mind. Every time someone bumped him in the hallway, every time they threw a crumpled piece of paper at him, every time they gave him a dirty look or stifled a giggle as he passed, he would wait. He would grit his teeth and keep his head held high and he would let his anger fester and he would wait, because he knew that he was destined for more than they could ever imagine.

The "more" he was waiting for came three days after he turned 24, at 11:32 on a Monday evening.

He was ripped from his sleep by a vibration so loud that the frames on his walls shook and his cat yelped and jolted under the bed. His house was quaking, there was a terrible pressure in his ears, and there were colorful lights shining into his room -- it struck a queasy feeling of déjà vu within him, and his heart pumped wildly while he sat up in his bed and stared out the window. Something was happening, he didn't know what but something was happening.