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xxxxxTaylor Marinov was born to Rebecca and Alex Marinov under pretty ordinary circumstances. The couple were trying to have children for a long time and were having difficulty conceiving, but eventually after enough effort and planning, they managed to conceive. Alex worked as a grocery bagger while Rebecca worked as a department director for Staples, so they had decided that Rebecca would be keeping her job after a brief maternity leave, while Alex would become a stay at home father.
xxxxxWhile the pregnancy progressed normally, Rebecca and Alex decided to be surprised by their child's sex, preparing a gender neutral room in keeping with their rather socially liberal politics. They were indeed surprised, as Taylor was born with ambiguous sex, brought on by partial androgen insensitivity syndrome. The doctors tried to convince Rebecca and Alex to surgically assign their child a sex, but they refused, again due to their politics. They thought that such a decision should be left to the child, but because they had to choose something to put down on the birth certificate, Taylor's birth certificate would have the 'F' gender marker.
xxxxxGrowing up, Taylor was treated neutrally with regards to gender, and generally lived in a loving household, raised by Alex as a stay at home father. Indeed, Taylor was actually spoiled rotten as a child due to being an only child who was very much wanted. Anything that Taylor wanted would be provided, as far Rebecca could afford. Many dolls were purchased for Tay, due to the child's interest in dressing them up and making up little worlds for them to play in. Taylor didn't make much of a distinction between GI Joes or Barbies or any other kinds of dolls, so long as they were generally people shaped. Entire soap opera worlds would be conceived in the child's mind, with detailed handmade costumes for all of them. Taylor also enjoyed playing video games, always keen on getting the next age appropriate game for their age category.
xxxxxIn school, Taylor did not associate much with their peers, mostly because the boys thought Taylor may be a girl and the girls thought Taylor might be a boy, and Taylor did not particularly help to clear any misconceptions up. Tay's grades were mostly average, Bs and Cs, with As in chemistry class, which was the only class that captured the youth's imagination. Tay could not tolerate being picked on by classmates, even though it happened frequently, and would get into frequent fist fights with other students as a result of the bullying from being a kind of outsider.
xxxxxAround the age that most children start going through puberty, Taylor opted to take puberty blockers to avoid gaining any sort of undesired secondary sex characteristics with the support of their parents. It was also around this age that Taylor met Timothy Glass, a boy who had transfered into the same grade. For once, Taylor actually grew a friendship with the boy, and then even more than that, a sort of romantic relationship started to bloom. When one boy, named Joseph, decided to give Timothy a black eye for being involved in an unusual relationship as one with Taylor, Tay decided to give the boy a piece of their mind. That piece of mind was delivered on the end of a fist, and delivered multiple times to the boy's face. This landed Taylor finally in anger management.
xxxxxAs part of anger management, Taylor started (reluctantly) writing in a journal to keep track of day to day emotions, and having unproductive meetings with the school counsellor. A month and a half after the anger management classes started, Joseph with a few of his friends decided to show Taylor and Timothy that he was not to be trifled with. After classes were over, and many students were getting ready to practice in a Halloween play for drama class, Joseph and his friends sought out Timothy and Taylor in the darkened halls of the school. A couple of the boys pinned down Taylor and beat them up, while Joseph slammed Timothy's head into a locker over and over and over until Tim's body lay limp while Taylor could do nothing but look on.
xxxxxThe stress of this situation started the trigger of Taylor's mutation, and Taylor snapped, throwing the boys pinning them down off with untapped strength, striking the boys hard enough to knock them down and frighten them enough to run away. Taylor called for a teacher to get help and get Timothy to the hospital, where he would be able to recover. Timothy remained in a coma for a few days due to the head trauma, but after getting to the hospital, Taylor would also need to be hospitalized.
xxxxxWhile Taylor's mutation was triggered on the fight, it only started the changes in the teen's body. Tay's bones and muscle started to reshape, causing the youth extreme pain during the slow transformation into something entirely inhuman. It took one week for Taylor's body to change entirely, becoming entirely covered in fur and animalistic features that caused many in the hospital to be frightened, and Taylor would document the horror of the experience in their anger management journal, explaining the physical and emotional pain that the process had inflicted. But more than anything, Taylor was still more concerned for Timothy Glass's well-being.
xxxxxTay checked on the boy daily while still being kept in the hospital for observation (under close scrutiny by some of the frightened staff). When Timothy woke up, however, he was frightened by Taylor's extreme shift in appearance, and quickly rejected the youth and whatever relationship that they had built up was quickly ended. While Taylor was used to being an outsider, the pain of isolation, the new and sometimes painful senses and from being visibly a mutant was too much and caused the teen to break down.
xxxxxForseeing that Taylor would likely experience problems going back to the same school, Alex and Rebecca decided to contact the Xavier's institute to get help in finding Taylor a place to fit in and reform healthy relationships, still wanting what would ultimately be best for their child.
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