Though Pierce Wise, like many of his kind, was brought into the world as a normal child, he developed very quickly into a clever - blue - boy. Always a bit pasty, and born with little lumps at the top of his forehead, Pierce was doted upon by his family. His parents were older than many, in their forties, when he was born. His next youngest sibling was more than ten years his senior.

The Wise family did sense that something was different about their son, the way that his skin was often quite cold or how he'd run outside buck naked on a snow-filled day and still remain without a single goose bump. He could hardly be given a hot drink, it would turn tepid and then cold within the span it took to take a few sips!

By the time he was six, Pierce's skin had begun to fully turn color away from the ruddy tan of his siblings. The little nubs under his skin began to poke through, dark blue horns? And, most strange of all, a small tail had begun growing. When he was ten, his transformation away from obviously-human was complete. Spines on his arms and legs, a tail, and hard dark horns on his head.

Needless to say, the Wise family thought the better of placing him in public school all this time.

"It's not that I don't appreciate it," Pierce said to the two Freshman class girls who hung around him, "but I'm not cold. At least, I don't feel cold. Okay?" He handed them back the sweaters and muffler, and took the looks of puppydog sadness in stride. They'd get over him. They'd have to. He wasn't 'into' girls...

They were nice, good friends. But somehow they'd all missed the fact that he'd rather be hanging out with the guys for a reason. He was attractive, certainly, and could have any girl as a partner he wished. What he wished, was that if he came out, the guys he admired on the sly wouldn't quit him completely too.

He'd told his brother, Max, but had sworn him to secrecy. Since coming to PSS, Pierce felt more relaxed about himself in many ways. Just not that one yet.

"But Pierce," whined the one girl, still waiting for some kind of acknowledgement she existed, "it's going to be a blizzard over the weekend, and you're always all alone!"

"I'll be fine," he said with a smile, holding up his strong fingers and producing a little flash of frost on them. "I like it cold like this."

He waited as they walked away, but he could hear them muttering, "he's a cold one all right, way too cold for me."

Pierce sighed. Maybe the guys in the dorm would understand. Maybe they wouldn't. Statistically speaking, one had to.

Even though Pierce was athletic and competitive like most guys, and could control his powers better than most sixteen year old mutants, there was one guy even younger than he who always out did the icy youth. Blake Rockwill, an aptly named sophomore, was stronger, hardier, could endure more, and was generally speaking more of a jock than anyone. Pierce liked Blake quite a bit, unlike a lot of his peers. They all thought he was a show off. Pierce, aside from thinking that the year-younger student was 'hot', understood a rather important bit of information about Blake. Blake's father had nearly beaten him to death when he was a child - just turning to the stony earth-controller he was now - and that his family line was always too competitive for their own good. They did like to show off. And they couldn't show Blake off, because of his 'deformities'.

Pierce spent time alone with Blake talking about how wrong they thought his family was. But behind the exterior of confidence and charm, Blake was lost - alone, confused, angry. More than a fifteen year old could handle, at times. He was always taught that he should compete and do his best to show up all the others. But never allowed to do so where anyone would acknowledge his achievements.

Paragon's special program was a life saving intervention for the boy. Pierce was already in the program, when Blake was brought in. They'd been friends and room mates ever since.

"Got a question for ya," Blake said, sitting at his custom made desk on his side of the dorm room. "What's it called when a doctor takes that oath? What's it called?"

"The Hippocratic oath," Pierce said, putting his books down and trying to decide what to listen to on the stereo.

"And..." Blake continued while staring at the computer screen in front of him, typing, "what's it called when you do something idiotic and then tell someone else not to do it even though you just did it yourself?"

"Hypocritical." Pierce paused, turned, and saw Blake's massive fingers settling over the keyboard but pausing. "They're spelled differently," the icy lad laughed. He spelled them, and then they had a good rollicking discussion about why two words which sounded so very alike were so extremely different. Blake was hardly stupid, but he wasn't the academic that a lot of the students here could become. He at least was always entertained when Pierce explained something to him. Maybe it was that he understood everything, or maybe he liked hearing a different perspective on things.

"Blizzard's on its way," someone said as they passed the dorm, "we're supposed to make sure that the campus is all locked up and windows closed. Pierce," he added, "you're on checking duty outside, get to it."

"Well that solves the question of what I'm doing for the next hour..." Pierce grunted.

"I'll go with ya," Blake said, "I'm done with my homework anyway. Blizzard huh?"

"Yeah," Pierce said. "I can almost kinda feel it, too, coming in."

"That's so cool," Blake muttered.

"Can't you detect your element?" Pierce asked, as they got out of the dorms and started examining the windows on the building from the exterior. While neither of them could fly at any speed, Pierce could hover with a bit of icy wind below him, and Blake's ability to alter density and gravity gave him a boost into the air.

"Yeah, but not like you think. I'm not all rock, it's this I can do," Blake concentrated for a moment and a batch of dirt came loose from the ground and bobbed around a little. It soon vanished into what looked like a puff of dust. "I can sense the density of that rock over there," he pointed to a formation in the corner of the courtyard, "is different from the reinforcements underground for the facility down there," he nodded at the ground beneath the building.

Shortly they made their way around the dorm building, and only had to close up one window that had been forgotten. It wouldn't do for the energy bill to have any storm wind coming in and screwing everything up - of course the temperature inside the building was actually being controlled by a number of talented mutants anyway.

The blizzard lasted through the weekend, and into the first couple days of their session. It was a very early taste of what was to come, but it was only fall yet - not even winter. The weather around Paragon was always screwed up, no one could really predict it until they were right in it.

During the all-indoors sessions, the powers lab was often in use. Since a lot of mutations allowed many of the students to fight or compete, the staff provided them with entertainment. The lab was made up as an outdoor building, rather like a movie set - but far more durable. Practicing on some abandoned Rikti equipment, left over from the invasion they led on the city some years before, pairs and teams were allowed to infiltrate, fly around, damage things, and generally get their pent up aggressions out when they couldn't do it outdoors.

Pierce could, but only he and about half a dozen ice-based kids could be allowed outside while this storm came through.

As they practiced, Pierce watched Blake - probably more intensely than he should have. It wasn't that he was scrutinizing his attack process or figuring out weaknesses in his defenses. He was busy watching the burly student's butt.

Pierce heard a distinctly unfriendly chuckle from one corner of the lab, and tried to ignore it. He'd heard that laugh elsewhere, outside, in public. Not aimed at himself of course, because he usually hid his sexual orientation perfectly well there. No, he'd heard other bashers use that tone of voice to deride other gay men.

The pit of Pierce's stomach dropped, when he realized that he was being far too obvious. But before he could do anything, the arrogant senior everyone wished would just graduate and get out - Jonas Jones - barked out to Blake, "hey Blake! Looks like blue boy over there is gettin a chubby watching you work out!"

Pierce wanted to die, but Blake shook off his shoulders from the dust that always accumulated while he worked his powers, and turned to face Jones.

"Yeah, so?" He said, shrugging. "And I watch yours in the shower, but you never laughed at me for it."

Jonas' two lackeys sharply jolted at that, and Jones himself pulled his head back, balking. He was a good looking man, black hair and striking electric blue eyes - eyes that glowed whenever his voltage powers were used. This time, he was left speechless.

So was Pierce. He found that his hands were shaking, he could hardly even walk.

"You totally told them off," Pierce whispered.

"Yeah, they deserved it. Jerks." Blake said, still totally nonchalant.

"But... do you?" The ice mutant asked quietly.

"Sure, but he ain't my type. I don't like static electricity messing with my dust clouds." Blake smiled, losing his cloddy armor and going back to his dirt-rock looking self.

"You never ... said anything."

"Neither did you, but I could tell anyway. That's just another one of those things my dad would'a killed me for being, it's no big deal t' me. I'm used to hiding it too, but I don't hafta worry about girls going all goggly over me like you do."

Blake laughed and tapped Pierce's shoulder with his knuckle. "Come on," he said, "I wanna go terrorize ol' Jones some more. Turn the tables on em."

And they did...

With the blizzard over, and the warmer air coming back to the campus, there was another change on the way. The big auditorium was filled with students from the whole school, as they were introduced to a pair of very unusual people.

((also found in other students pages))

"We've got some ... special guests," said the principal, who doubled as a top-level government scientist in his spare time (or, doubled as the principal of this odd school, depending on which set of payroll stubs you read). "They've been sent here from across the country, actually, recommended to us by the kind folks at Carramba High school."

Mutterings went around the assembly. There were students of a wide age range attending this facility, from whenever their powers surfaced or their appearances made it impossible for them to attend normal schools. The seniors were asked to be nearer the front this time, where they were usually shunted to the back because most of them were much bigger than the youngest.

A pair of people, clearly mutants themselves, came out from the back stage. But they were so ... different. Both of them had feline looks to them, they were spotted like cheetahs, their tails had big white tips. Were they siblings? How did this happen? No one had really ever seen 'matching' mutants!

"This is Omaciyu and Temih," the principal said, whispering below his breath, "did I get that right? They're visiting from a place called Planet Twenty, and they're here to discuss something... rather important."

The cheetah male, Omaciyu by name, who had bowed when introduced, was very tall and slender, bore a turban covered head and looked quite simply 'exotic' in his cloak and pants. His female companion, Temih, was stockier and quite a bit darker in color.

Right about the time Omaciyu was going to start talking into the microphone on stage, the murmuring started. Did he say 'planet' twenty? Where was that? Was this some kind of joke by the sci-fi club? Furries? Who dressed up like those any more?

"Please, please," Oma said holding his hands up and instantly chilling the audience into silence. "We are indeed from another planet. But we are, more than that, from another... dimension. I'm sure you are familiar with the idea that there exist many different realities, some of which have different histories than your own?" He went with this, not giving anyone time to argue. It was the truth after all.

Pierce nudged Blake, "what'd I tell you? All that research into the string theory was right!"

"Shuttup," Blake muttered, "I wanna hear what he's saying..." It was easier to ignore his friend right now, since Omaciyu was pushing a gentle wave of empathic control to listen and accept, to the kids in the audience.

"We've come here because young people stand the strongest chance of successfully bonding with certain ... creatures. We would like to introduce you to them, two of them, and see if any of you would be the most appropriate."

"Sir?" Asked someone more bold - or more likely an empath who was able to beat Oma's powerful controls, "appropriate for what?"

"Dragon riding," the female said, since Omaciyu was already halfway out the side door.

The door led to a courtyard, in which was usually a couple kiosks or sign-up desks for on campus activities. This day however... Everything was cleared away exept...

The two dragons. One was quite large, as in, the length of a city bus or more, with a head almost twice as high. His wingspan must be huge to support flight at that size. He was colored in shades of copper or brown, while the other was obviously of a different 'breed', dappled soft brown and yellow, with a green underbelly. She was much smaller, but still rather large - minivan size or so...

Everyone pretty much froze. That was due in large part to Omaciyu's command over their emotions. He kept groups like this calm - that was his gift. His partner Temih (whether she was his lover or not, no one could guess - they were still stuck glued to the dragons anyway), said, "they will like it if you come to them in small groups, but don't be afraid. They will never hurt anyone."

Pierce and Blake were among the first to head toward the dragons, and they did so boldly. Shortly two groups were formed. A large bulk of the students - mostly the youngest but also a good portion of the others. And the other, much smaller group, which were then approached by the pair of cheetah Kin.

"You children," Temih said, "have been Searched. Our dragons believe that you have what it takes to ride or command, perhaps even fight, upon dragon back."

Pierce and Blake noticed about the same time, that ol' Jonas was among the bigger, unsearched group. They shared a private grin and laugh about that!

"Dragons are not toys or pets," Oma added a moment later, "they are companions, lifemates. Mentally bonded from hatching to you, if you are the right one for the egg."

The principal was smiling like an idiot. Another girl in the group of Searched giggled. "I wonder what he gets out of this," she said.

"Probably a huge raise, and some funky genetic material to experiment with, wooooooOOoohh!" Jet, her boyfriend, made silly noises. Then he straightened up and wiped the big grin off his face, in as much as he could, when the principal walked by. Everyone else did the same - was it more of Omaciyu's commanding? Or was it just that now, they had a similar goal?

"You'll be requested to come back here, to finish your training, if you do pair up with a dragon," he said.

All told, there were about a dozen students among the population who had been singled out. More than a hundred others hadn't. Some would have complained, if Omaciyu hadn't simply asked them not to. Mentally of course...

"I still can't get over the fact that you're ... well, like me." Pierce said, as he and Blake packed their clothing and books away.

"Gay, Pierce, you can say it, it's okay to say it out loud." Blake said, and whenever they spoke of this he always had this one grin on his stony face. Pierce grew to adore that smile.

"What I don't understand," Blake said, "is what a guy like you sees in a guy like me."

"I..." Pierce stood up and thought on it a minute, while Blake busied himself selecting items to go into his two suitcases. "Everything," he whispered.

"Well tell me about it when we get to where we're going, yeah?" Blake said, shutting - or trying to shut - his suitcase. It didn't quite want to close. Eventually he growled at it and opened it up again.

"Look you can put some of that stuff in my bag," Pierce said, "I mean, I hardly wear anything even if it's cold out, and if you carry the cd's I can keep our grooming stuff." They did have a strange assortment of waxes, polishes, brushes and picks to keep Blake's skin from attracting weird objects, and the shine on Pierce's skin and horns.

"Okay, that sounds good." Blake said. They finished up and were on their way, once they'd chosen their dragonry.

Hulkster and Icey came from TrisHath, though how they got to the pair of guys no one knows!