X-Files details: This is an old-fashioned X File. As such, it's not dependent on the larger series mytharc. But there are a few things that one can't avoid. If we assume that events in the X-Men film occur (as it says) "in the not too distant future," then I must extrapolate from the X-Files season (2001). This assumes no details from the final season!  Billy is still with Scully and Mulder.

• There are three people on the X-Files after 2001­ but Mulder is no longer one of them. He was drummed out of the FBI in season 8. The current agents assigned to the X-Files are John Doggett, Monica Reyes, and Dana Scully (part time). Yet Reyes isn't in this tale, and Doggett only briefly.  And yes, dammit, I LIKE Doggett.  He gets only a small cameo in Part II because he doesn’t really fit into the story. This is a Mulder-Scully piece, though readers do need to know that by Part II, Mulder is no longer an FBI agent.
• Also, Scully had a baby at the end of season 8, which is apparently Mulder's, although that was never spelled out in so many words. I've assumed here that the two did marry at some point after 2001.  Naturally, the dynamics of interpersonal relationships among the X-Files crowd will have altered somewhat in the four years between the events of the 2001 season, and the events in Part II of this story.
• Images came almost exclusively from Haven's Image Gallery (no longer available).

• Events here are prior to or consanguineous with the early scenes of the movie. That means Rogue and Logan have not yet arrived at the mansion and do not appear in this story.
• As in my "Five Pounds," I follow COMIC canon here, which makes Cyclops an orphan. The basic tale of Scott's foster parents is a MUCH modified version of "Little Boy Lost" (with thanks to Pugui for putting it on the Red Shades archive). As comic fans know, Scott spent years at an orphanage in Omaha, Nebraska.
• Despite this Scott-as-orphan take, I do follow the movie novelization in which Scott's power manifested at his senior prom. The scene in the screenplay used for the novel was not filmed, but everything you need to know about it is related in the story. (Yes, I let Selena grow up in "Goddess of the Moon," but this is Selena as she was at seventeen.)
• The snippet of initial dialogue at the beginning of Part II is taken directly from the beginning of X-Men: The Movie.
• Images come from a variety of sources, please see my Links page.

A last note: fosterage is easy to demonize. But there are good foster parents, as well as bad ones. And not all foster kids are trouble. This story is dedicated to the foster parents who do it for all the right reasons.

Disclaimer: The X-Files belongs to Fox Studios and Chris Carter, Mulder to David Duchovny and Scully to Gillian Anderson.  X-Men: The Movie belongs to Marvel Comics and Twentieth Century Fox, James Marsden has made Cyclops his own, Famke Janssen played Jean Grey, and the amazing Patrick Stewart has brought to life Professor X, who will now forever have a British accent in my mind.  :-)
 

ON TO THE STORY, PART I