On Being Mystique

They act like being a shape-shifter is oh-so-easy. "Raven, dear, would you be so kind as to morph into Nightcrawler for me?"

As if it's just that easy. You know, a little butt-wiggle, cheeky grin in the audience direction, and that's it, like a film or something. Oh yeah. Nightcrawler is a good example. Magneto said, "Raven, half the genes are already there!"

Half of them. Ish. Cancel out his own personal mutations, which you have to say are pretty much away from the norm... I can't morph into someone's mutation, can I? Even Erik knows that. Kurt's appearance is mostly mutation. Luckyily it's mostly my mutation and not his, but still, he expects me to grow a tail. A tail!

But I thought I'd show willing and try, at least. So I slunk off by myself and attempted to grow myself a tail.

Shape-shifting is a lot more painful than you'd think. I mean, you just try rearrange your body so you can use half your ass as a tail, stretch your teeth into fangs... I mean, obviously I can shape-shift a certain amount bigger or smaller. But, say, Juggernaut. I'd be able to get to his size, but I'd be so weak if someone pushed me over I'd probably break half my bones. When I get smaller, all of my body compresses. When I get larger, it spaces out. So, this tail.

Trying to grow a tail is like having constipation.

It was less painful giving birth to the creature. It took me an hour to get a half decent tail. A painful hour that left me exhausted. Anything I change during a shape-shift goes into pain similar to period cramps. My ass was killing so much I couldn't sit down. Or stand up. So I had to lay on the floor, trying to make my appearance more manly and develop those fangs. Easier, admittedly, than a tail, but still nothing like people think.

Half an hour later, I stood up and tried to waggle my new tail. Problem. My tail was made up of various parts of me, and I had to find out which parts before I could move it. Wiggled my fingers. Strange, what with having the three-fingered hands, but managable (providing I didn't have to pick anything up, that is). Eventually, I discovered something along the lines of bending my left knee made my tail wiggle in the middle.

"Ah. Very good."
I glared up at Magneto from my resting spot on the floor. I flashed my fangs at him.
"Good girl. Now..."
God, he could be irritating sometimes. He paused, giving me time to think about Kurt. My son.
"It turns out I don't need Nightcrawler yet," he said, slowly and casually. "Consider this a practise run, my dear."

Not all transformations are as long and painful as that, of course. The more practise I've had on a particular person, the quicker it goes. It's still painful, of course, but it passes quicker. And the more similar they are to me, the quicker I can learn their shape. Women are faster than men, and a, how shall I put this delicately, a fully-functioning male takes even longer. A woman of my height with my figure is much faster and less painful than one much shorter, or taller. My practise at Magneto means I can do him in under five seconds (I've had Toad time me once or twice, when we having a piss-take session of Magneto). To change my skin colour, it can be done in 1.7 seconds (Toad and that friggin' stopwatch...).

The problem is, I always know, no matter how much effort goes into getting there, it's going to take just that little bit more to get me back. it's quicker, but there's more pain. You get used to it, I suppose. A bit.

It must've been the third or fourth time I ever transformed that was the first time I got stuck. There I was, showing off. I started with my head, and transformed downwards into my then-favourite transformation, the exact copy of my friend Irene.

Then I attempted to go from the feet up back to myself. Feet, smooth... ankles, ouch, not good, but still going okay, legs, blue again, hips, back to their original shape, stomach darkening, finger tips tingling as they returned to normal, shoulders, neck, hea---uhhh. I jolted sharply like I'd been electrocuted and Irene stopped laughing. And there I was, stuck, with Irene's head on my body. I tried again. I went backwards, back to Irene and then back to myself, but I was definetely stuck. I panicked, of course, and managed to shape-shift into parts of the other few people I'd been before. And then, without warning, something beyond my control, I shifted back to myself. It was incredibly painful, like being thrown off my feet into a wall.

I was afraid of transforming for weeks after that.

I won't pretend, of course, that it's not useful to be able to shape-shift. Of course it is. I wouldn't want to not have this mutation, I'm just saying it's painful. And that Erik Lensherr is an unreasonable demanding moron. That's all.