From Yesterday (Young Justice/ X-Men Evolution Fiction)

Chapter Four

We end up in Gotham's Chinatown, and I buy some clothes off a few vendor carts so I can lose my school uniform in favor of jeans and a sweatshirt. I get two jackets and an extra pair of gloves, too, to share with Pietro. His jacket sucks and he doesn't have gloves.

He promises to pay me back later, but I'm not gonna hold him to it. After I cram my uniform, choking tie and all, in my backpack, we spend an hour walking the streets of Chinatown, eating steaming noodles from Styrofoam cups with chopsticks and talking about school. He used to go to a public school in New York in a town called Bayville.

Bayville was on the news this morning. "Hey, do you know your old high school got shut down because of mutant protests?" I ask him.

He slurps more noodles and drinks the broth. "Mm... doesn't surprise me."

I pass him my cup of noodles. I only ate about half, but I'm pretty full and he looks like he can use a few meals. He grins at me and starts in on my food with gusto.

"You know any mutants?" I ask. I don't think mutants hide their identities like most metas do. A lot of the people I see on the news don't wear masks, and some mutants can't hide their identities if they try. Masks don't do much for big, blue and furry.

Pietro shrugs. "Maybe. Who knows? Most people don't go around saying, Hi, I'm a mutant. Do you know any?"

I shrug at him and flash him my shit-eater. "Who knows? Most people don't go around saying, Hi, I'm a mutant. But I have met Superman; he saved me from kidnappers."

Pietro twirls noodles around a single chopstick. "Dude, cool. What about Batman? He's a meta, right?"

"No," I say, drawing out the word so that it seems like I'm thinking about it. "I met him a time or two, and he's just a big guy with a lot of cool toys."

"It's funny, DG. You know how aliens and metas put on masks and capes and get kitties down from trees and then people erect statues in their honor? Some mutants do the same, but once it gets out that they've got the X-gene, bye-bye free lunch. I wonder how many metas are really mutants in disguise. I mean, you can't really know until you run a genetic test."

I hum. He's right. "But you know they run those tests on all babies born in certain hospitals. Some OBGYNs run them in the womb."

"I hear they do it every time you go to the doctor and let them draw blood," Pietro says. "Guess that's why Rom think going to gadje doctors is dealing with the devil, huh?"

I snort. "I've got two bum kidneys that would have liked for certain Rom to have gone to gadje doctors to have some medical records on file."

Pietro stops eating and stares at me, looking horrified. "What? Are you okay? You don't look sick, and you're doing gymnastics..."

I smirk at him, touched that he's so worried about me. "I'm fine. My kidneys just have a problem breaking down amino acids and I get kidney stones. Hurts like a bitch when it happens, but I'm good."

Pietro continues to frown and he sips broth from my cup. "You know, Uncle Vic used to get stones all the time. You remember?"

I frown, too, trying to remember Uncle Vic. He had been a tall, thin guy with jaundice that spat when he talked. He was really funny, though, and did the best impressions. But I do remember him lying down a lot, and the old ladies of the clan always mixing up medicines for him.

"I don't know if he was actually related to you, though. Was he?" Pietro asks.

I rub my chin, deep in thought. The family had been so big, and there were so many married-in's and adopted in's that only the old people really knew who was who anymore. Uncle Vic could have been my real uncle. I give Pietro a small push. I know Pietro isn't my real cousin. He and Wanda are adopted-in's.