HOME | DD

Description
        Rain.  It always rained here, never snowed, sleeted, or anything else, for that matter.  It was on of the many things Wayne always missed most about his rural home, the variety in the weather.

As he listened to the pitter patter of the rain outside, Wayne found himself in a more severe bout of homesickness.  After all, this city was far from similar to his northern Tennessee home.  Oh, how he wished he could be back there right now.

        Of course, for the time being, that was as impossible as making it snow here, or very dangerous at the very least.  After all, he was a mutant, one of the many born in his generation.  With the matter having become very politically charged in recent times, it was hard to keep safe back home.
‘And here, them politicians already passed those protection laws,’ he thought with a sigh.

The twenty-six year old rubbed his thin beard before sliding a pair of dark sunglasses over his brown eyes and a Western-style cowboy hat over his short black hair.  After all, as a card dealer in a Western style casino, he had to look the part.

Then to Wayne’s more than mild surprise, there came several knocks at the door—the back door.
“Now that’s plum weird.  Who’d come knocking at this time of—” he asked himself as he began walking to the other side of his small suburban home.  However, before he could even finish his sentence, the door was thrown, or rather blasted, inwards.

Wayne looked at the burning edges of the door a moment before looking to the door way to find a man with longer, black hair, his own age—give or take.  The man was smirking, almost manically.

“Wayne, it’s good to see you, buddy,” the man said ominously, the last word being spit out with more contempt than all the rest of the world could possibly muster.

“Felix, what the hell are you—“

“It’s Phoenix now,” he interrupted.

Wayne gave a sigh.  “Damn do some things never change.  You’re still interrupting me mid-sentence and you’re still into all that mythology junk,” he said, his voice changing from mild weariness to less mild amusement as he spoke.

“More than you know,” came Phoenix’s ominous reply, “But you always knew I’d be coming for you, Wayne.”
“I guess that’s something that’s yet to change, too,” Wayne said with a laugh.  “Still, I’ve no mind to fight you, Felix.”

Felix began laughing quietly before saying, “Funny.  Catherine said the same thing.  Don’t worry, she didn’t feel much,” he took a pause, dodging a vase that seemingly of its own accord flew off a near-by table at his head, “only what was necessary—you know, legs, hair, arms burning off.”  As he finished, he began laughing, his fists igniting in a dark black flame.

Wayne was already rushing at Felix.  After all, he reasoned, it was only natural that he would be moving toward the bastard.  Wayne had, with his mutant ability, created a large gravity well around Felix, and who has either of them to defy nature?  If Wayne’s fists landed upside Felix’s head as he obeyed the laws of attraction, what could it be helped?

Phoenix laughed ever harder as Wayne ran at him.  He didn’t doubt for a single second that this would be over quickly.  When they had fought as boys back home, Wayne never won, at least not before figuring out about his powers.  It had taken Felix many years more than his friend to come to the realization that he too was a super human.

Now as he watched Wayne run the paramount suicide charge at him, only one thought occurred to him:

“Bring it on, bro.”