It’s easy for them to believe that I’m the daughter of Angelo. After all, Angelo and I do have similar powers.

Angelo was capable of surrounding himself in an almost impregnable forcefield. Unfortunately, while his forcefield was even more powerful that those of the Invisible Woman, he had no control over it. His forcefield constantly surrounded him, and eventually he couldn’t touch anything. It grew so that Unus couldn’t eat or drink, and a time came when his forcefield became so powerful that even air itself couldn’t get past it. Many believe that he’s dead, killed by too much power and too little control.

I, on the other hand, have almost total control over my powers. Not only can I turn my forcefield ‘on’ and ‘off’ at will, I can even bend and shape it to my will. I’ve created massive claws and hammers to attack my enemies, and I’ve expanded my forcefield around my fellow Acolytes to protect them as well. Unfortunately, the price for my control is that my forcefield isn’t very strong. I can’t even count the number of times that Colossus had bashed through my forcefield.

Angelo had total invulnerability, but no control. I, Carmella, have total control, but not much in terms of strength. Once, I asked Amelia Voight, a former teammate of mine in the Acolytes, why Angelo and I had such different versions of the same power. Well, she spent about half an hour spouting off to me about how it was related to gender. Like, Angelo’s powers were the way they are because he was a man, and men are muscle-bound oafs that don’t have the intelligence to make use of their strengths. Of course, that would mean that my powers are the way they are because I’m a woman, and woman are naturally controlling, but also naturally weak.

Yeah, I thought it was bull too. That was one of many reasons why I didn’t like the stuck-up bitch.

Myself, I think my powers are so different from Angelo’s because I got smart. Angelo wanted power, at whatever the price. Looking back on what happened to him, I suppose I just subconsciously decided that it wasn’t worth the price. As it turns out, I ended up more powerful than he ever was. I just have to be smarter about using what little power I have.

Well, like I said, most people think I’m Angelo’s daughter because of our powers. In all honesty, that really doesn’t make sense. There are tons of mutants in the world who have similar powers, and they aren’t related in any way. Also, if you look at most of the other mutant families, you’ll see how stupid it really is.

First, look at Magneto and his kids. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch have totally different powers compared to their father. I even heard somewhere that Quicksilver’s daughter isn’t even a mutant at all. The same is true for that dead bastard Grayden Creed and his parents, none other than Sabretooth and Mystique. Of course, he inherited their winning personalities.

Heh, personality. If anything, that’s what Angelo and I have the most in common. In a sense, we’re both brawlers, easy to anger and hard to cool down. Mostly because we have this pent-up anger within ourselves, this inner-rage that we try to bury and cover up.

Anger at the world, the anger that only an outcast knows. And I’m not just talking about being a mutant.

Funny thing is, I’m not even in the dream. Instead, I’m the subject, discussed about by a doctor and two people that could only be my parents. They look nothing like what I remember, but I know in my heart that it’s them.

Basically, the doctor just sits there behind his desk, all those fancy awards and diplomas hung behind him, and he explains the situation. He explains how rare it is, that’s it’s often caused by a hormonal imbalance in the fetus. Then he goes on about the surgery and the injections of hormones, all for the cause of making a newborn babe ‘normal’. Then the doctor asks my parents a question that I can’t quite hear, a choice that they have to make. Then I wake up, always left wondering.

I know this dream represents something I already know, something deep within my subconscious. Or maybe in Angelo’s? Perhaps the key to learning the truth is to learn about the relationship I share with Angelo.

Angelo was a man that tried to belong, but never felt that he did. Even when he was teaming up with other mutants to destroy the world or whatever, he always felt like the odd man out. Kind of strange, really, considering he hung around with the Blob more than anybody else.

Angelo and the Blob were…I suppose you could call them friends. They were certainly closer than most other villains were. Perhaps their both being outcasts, set apart from the world, helped contribute to this. I know that sometimes I can feel Blob staring at me, observing me. Perhaps it’s related to the fact that I’m supposedly the daughter of his best friends, or perhaps he’s just a fat slob that can’t get a date. I suspect the former. I know he likes them big-boned.

I suppose Angelo’s life truly changed when he was reverted to the age of a child. All of a sudden, he was at an age where it didn’t matter if you fit in or not, because at that time your best friend was your imagination. Of the entire Brotherhood, I think Angelo was the only one that truly enjoyed his second experience as a child. Returning to adulthood certainly wasn’t pleasant for him, I know well.

At first, Angelo had tried to hide what had happened. He teamed up with Blob a few more times, attempting to stay the same old Angelo. But deep down, Angelo knew he wasn’t the same, that he’d been changed forever by the experience. Finally, his powers raging out of control, perhaps as a sign of his own inner chaos, Angelo took the opportunity to fake his death. He vanished from the world, retreating within himself to make sense of what had happened.

My childhood isn’t worth mentioning, so I won’t. When I discovered my mutant powers, I had your basic reaction of fear and loneliness. Eventually I moved past these fears, as well as others, and I moved on with my life. Probably the happiest I had ever been was when I lived in Italy. I had built up a decent career as a sculpture, making use of my force field to warp and shape the clay in record time. If not for Fabian Cortez, I’d probably still be there, living my happy life as a sculptress in Vienna.

Yes, now we’ve made it to Fabian Cortez, the man that betrayed Magneto. It should come to no surprise that the Acolytes he’d taken with him to Asteroid M weren’t all of his followers. Milan was a childhood friend of Fabian’s, and together the two gathered the Acolytes. Milan, using his unique computer language ability, scoured the online world for hints of mutants. Cortez approached those that Milan found, and he’d give his great speeches about how we’re better than flatscans and how they aren’t fit to lick our boots.

Well, after Cortez destroyed Asteroid M and left Magneto and the other Acolytes for dead, he returned to Milan to find a new batch of rumored mutants. I honestly don’t know whether or not Milan was privy to Fabian’s plan, or if he was just another unwitting pawn. As he’s now dead, and I wouldn’t trust anything Fabian had to say no matter what, I suppose I’ll never know.

So it came that Fabian approached me to join his Acolytes. I’d read the news, of course, so I’d heard what had happened to Magneto and I knew the state of danger mutants were in at the time. I told myself that if Cortez could find me, that others could as well. So, out of safety, I joined with Cortez and his second wave of zealots.

It was Cortez that gave me the name Unuscione, and he was the first one to call me Angelo’s daughter. If he thought that having a second-generation follower of Magneto on his team would help, he was right. I was the reason that the Kleinstocks and Joanna Cargill joined. In fact, I should probably mention that the Kleinstocks had something of a crush on me, and I suspect Cargill did too. Those three Kleinstocks hit on me every chance they had, and it was only after Eric’s death they their advances almost worked. They got me so drunk that I had no inhibitions left. Unfortunately for the Kleinstocks, these inhibitions were all the kept me from beating the tar out of them.

Like I’d said before, I joined the Acolytes out of safety. Among that pack of thugs and fanatics, I felt like more of an outcast than ever. Many of the Acolytes were nothing but bigoted Aryan wannabes, fighting to overtake humanity because they could, not out of any self-defense. Why Magneto put up with it I’ll never understand.

Heh, I don’t think I had ever been more frightened than when Magneto returned and took over the Acolytes. Sure, many of the X-Men were familiar with Angelo, when it’s hard to observe somebody properly when you’re in the heat of battle. Magneto, however, had known Angelo well, and I knew that the moment he heard the rumors that I was Angelo’s daughter, that his curiosity would unearth the truth. My fears proved unfounded, however, when the X-Men successfully attacked Magneto days later.

So, that’s pretty much my life. After the destruction of Avalon, I pretty much just wandered around, trying to find meaning in my life. When I found out about Toad gathering a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, I figured the third time was the charm, and I threw my hat in the ring.

Now I’m among a group of individuals just as alone and frightened as I am, and I couldn’t be happier. Here, next to people with self-esteem issues and fatal diseases, I feel like for the first time I can let my hair down and socialize. At first, I was scared when Blob returned, but I know he’s too stupid to figure anything out. Though I can’t be too sure about Toad and Vanisher…