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I Like This Person, Let's Do Stuff; (Young Hank)
Topic Started: Jun 15 2015, 05:33 AM (259 Views)
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Electrokinesis / Cloned Origin
March 14
Daytime


The school never changed, and by never changed, Jonny meant that the place could be blown to bits, people could come and go, new outbuildings could be built, but the weirdness, the inherent weirdness of a place filled with superpowered teenagers. The current weirdness was that a trio of the first class had come forward in time. Apparently, someone had stolen their Warren? It was all very weird, considering Jon had no memory of this event... granted, he wasn't really the Jon Harper that had been around back then, but he still had all the memories of that poor unfortunate soul.

Scotty had said his younger part claimed their memories would be wiped which made sense, but Jonny, of course, had turned that over and over in his head. So, if memories were wiped, that meant there was probably some residual left behind that could be detected, but since Jonny's memories were residual left from the imperfections of the clone process, would there be a residual of a residual?

"Jonny! Jonny!" called a voice and he looked over to see Marshall, one of the three Moloid kids who they had brought here from the Undercity, jogging over from where he and a bunch of other young boys were running laps under the watchful eye of their PE teacher. "You come to visit?"

"Hey, Marsh," Jonny waved, "Yeah, I'm going to see one of our new visitors." He slung his arm around the now teenaged moloid, "How's school?"

"Is ok," said Marshall in that stilted way the moloids spoke. "Holly likes more than Will. Little Brother wants more play than learn."

"Well, you tell Little Brother that if he play more than learn, he'll end up a loser like Jonny," Harper teased.

Marshall laughed, "Jonny is a god, not loser."

"Keep thinking that way, kid," Jonny laughed, "Now, head back to your laps so your teacher will stop giving me the stink eye."

Adjusting the goggles that protected his sensitive eyes, Marshall said, "Running laps is not play." Then, he jogged off and Jon watched for a moment, so proud of the way the strange fungoid children were adjusting to the Up Top World.

Then, he went inside, giving a mental shout out to Jean, sharing a short telepathic conversation before she pointed him downstairs.

The electric feel of the Danger Room systems were more than alert enough for Jonny, once he made his way to the sub-basement. He knocked on the door frame to the outer chamber and called, "Hey, Luuuuuucy, I'm hooooome," before entering.

Good afternoon, Jon, came the synthesized voice of the lovely lady robot who ran the place.

"Hey, Danger, how's my favorite sexy robut?" he called back.

I am performing at 100% optimal perimeters, Danger answered. The Danger Room is currently occupied.

"I know, sweetness, I'm here to see the boy beyond these hallowed gates."

Danger examined her running systems and, seeing that no involved training scenario was running, acquiesced and opened the door, revealing...

"Oh my god," Jonny said, as he took in the site of the boy that was. "I forgot how ugly you were all fleshy and bald." He smiled brightly, "Look at you, Hanky Panky, you a bebe." He spread his arms, "Come and give your Jonny Boy a hug."
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Young Beast
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Not Yet Blue and Furry
Since it was a certainty that the Professor would wipe their memories of being in the future when they returned Hank decided to let his curiosity guide him. Of course what he wanted more than anything was to find his older self and find out what the hell had happened to turn him blue and furry, but his older self had closeted himself into his laboratory and had not been seen since.

Hank was certain it was an avoidance tactic, since he himself often did the same when he didn't want to confront something.

Instead he decided to absorb the technology and immediately made his way to the Danger Room. He'd explored some of the programs on file and was delighted to see some of the programs he and Jonny had discussed cooking up once the technology allowed for it were in the database.

He wondered how often they went through a simulation as Han and Chewie or as Indiana Jones.

He'd spent the past hour examining the actual hardware and was pretty sure he understood how it worked and could probably reproduce it when they returned if they weren't gong to be mind-wiped.

With a sigh he rested on his haunches. "Well, since it might be a few years before I have this opportunity again maybe I should try one of the programs out."

At that moment a familiar voice erupted behind him.

"Oh my god," Jonny said, as he took in the site of the boy that was. "I forgot how ugly you were all fleshy and bald." He smiled brightly, "Look at you, Hanky Panky, you a bebe." He spread his arms, "Come and give your Jonny Boy a hug."

Hank whirled around. He was older, a bit more careworn, but he'd recognize that grin and twinkle anywhere, "By my stars and garters, as I live and breathe." He followed that up and clasped the older version of his best friend in a back-thumping man hug.

"I was wondering when you'd make an appearance. With Jean, Scott, Warren and myself accounted for I knew you had to be around here somewhere."

He stepped back and looked his friend up and down, "I have to say Jonny Boy, you are old."
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Electrokinesis / Cloned Origin
Hank McCoy, even at nineteen years old, was a big kid, and his hugs were the kind that cracked ribs and lifted feet of the ground. Jonny was overjoyed. It had taken Hank's counterpart some time to warm up to him, not just because of what this shoddily made clone had done while wearing his tragic friend's face, but because of what he represented. Jonny existed because his original had died and there had been nothing Hank could do to prevent it. Not even Warren's healing blood could have helped because it didn't work on natural disease only on injury. Jon had died a bad death, long and painful, and for a long time that had weighed on Hank, who thought that with all his intelligence and scientific skill he should have saved him.

Jon, for his part, in all the memories that his clone held, carried no such belief. Though the memories right in those last days were hazy because Jonny had been on so many drugs for the pain, there had never been a moment of resentment or regret. Jonathan Arwell Harper had died a bad death, yes, but he had done it well.

His clone did not reveal any of this to this tall, strong teenager who would some day grow to be a bigger, stronger, more hairy man, except to answer the comment about his age with a cheeky, "Oh, I'm a lot younger than I look, Hank."

Smiling at the teen, holding him at arm's length, he shook his head, "Wow, this is pretty amazing, you know. To see you like this. Scott... uh, mine not yours, said a certain handsome southern belle that shares my name stayed behind to power whatever brought you here? Too bad. I would love to see him, blow his mind a little you know."

Waving a gloved hand to indicate the room around them, Jonny said, "What do you think of the place? Betcha you didn't imagine how cool everything is, right? I mean who would have guessed we'd have a sentient alien artificial intelligence running our old playroom right?" He looked up at the ceiling, "You're a god send, aren't you, Danger?"

"I'm a creation of the Nuwali, Designate Jon," Danger's voice replied, echoing from the speakers, "They were alien to this planet, but I do not believe they were deities."

Jonny hitched his thumb at the wall, "She's a hoot, right? So, tell me, Hankela, you enjoying your time traveling adventure? Anything I can show you? Lotto numbers? Who's gonna win the World Series? Invest in Microsoft, kid, that's all I can say."
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Young Beast
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Jonny hitched his thumb at the wall, "She's a hoot, right? So, tell me, Hankela, you enjoying your time traveling adventure? Anything I can show you? Lotto numbers? Who's gonna win the World Series? Invest in Microsoft, kid, that's all I can say."

For the first time since arriving Hank didn't feel out of sorts. At every turn the original X-Men were so different than the people he knew and none of them became the person they were expected to be.

Jean and Scott married with kids, Warren seemingly perfectly okay with that, Scott the leader of the team and apparently for a long time, and he himself was BLUE!

But this was Jonny, older, but still the same at the core. And while he would joke about all the secrets of the future, Hank knew Jonny would tell him the truth, tell him what had happened, what had turned him into a monster.

"Actually, there is something you could explain to me." He glanced the direction he knew his lab to be, where to the best of his knowledge he was holed up. "As you can imagine our counterparts have found our arrival most disconcerting, but I think we've found our future selves even more surprising."

He held up a finger and ticked things off, "First you have Scott as the leader and apparently a thumping good one at that." A second finger raised, "you have he and Jean happily married and running the school in the Professor's place." He ticked a third finger up, "You have Warren exhibiting powers he never had and perfectly content with the love of his life ending up with a rival." A fourth finger, "You apparently are not actually one of the X-Men," and finally he raised his thumb, "And I AM BLUE!"

His voice raised, "I look like someone crossed a Smurf with a gorilla and I don't understand why. What happened?"
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Laughing at Hank's earnest confusion, Jonny said, "Yeah, there's a lot of things that didn't actually happen the way we thought they were going to, but the important thing to know, Hank, even though you might not remember it when you get back, the important thing is that we, all of us together, do a lot of good for this world."

"Danger, can you call up the history files?" Jonny asked, and without barely a pause the room filled with flat holograms of the school's history, of news footage, slideshows taken by staff, student and other, precious moments, frightening ones, some very personal and other's public and visible. They surrounded the pair like a walk through a gallery, everything moving and changing, but without sound.

Jonny pointed to one showing a lone figure putting himself through his paces in the Danger Room, a tall, skinny, desperate boy, brown hair matted to his forehead with sweat, relentlessly firing scarlet blasts at endlessly moving targets. "That's why Scott's the leader, Hank, and that's why he's a good leader. I spent my off time goofing off, you worked on your doctorate, Jeannie became a psychologist, Warren a businessman, but for Scott, this was it. This is all he had and he was willing to spend his whole life working to make sure that no one else got used or abused like him. Scotty's a good leader because he knows what it means to have nothing else. He believes that everyone can be better than they are, and he's able to inspire them to believe it to, and that's a pretty valuable thing. Scott leads us and protects us because he believes we're all worthy of being protected, which... is a pretty remarkable point of view if you really think hard about it."

He pointed to another image, a slideshow of Scott and Jean's wedding. If Hank looked, in some of the images Scott was sporting a cane, but other than that, the two looked very happy and very much in love. "The strange thing about all that was that by Scott becoming a better leader, and realizing his own strengths, the rest of us started to see it too, and whatever it was that Jean wanted, she found it in him, not in Warren. Warren... he realized something about himself as well, and where his life was taking him, Jean wasn't with him in all that. He found a new place, and a new love, and what he saw in Scott and Jean together was ok, because he understood it by then. When we were kids... I don't think any of us really knew what we wanted or needed, and things fell into place."

Moving on, Jonny paused when he came to the question about himself and he thought about what he was going to tell his old friend. Taking a deep breath, he said, "What happened with me, Hank, was a lot of really good years, but there were some really bad ones as well, and I ended up... a person I couldn't be proud to be. I was made to do some very bad things and by the time I was able to be me again, this place... it wasn't my home anymore. So, I decided that rather than live in the shadow of what I used to be, what I was turned into, what others told me I was, I was going to remake myself into what I wanted to be. Scott's little brother Alex, who you probably don't even know about at this point, had similar stuff happen, and he started a team for people like us who needed to find their way back to themselves, people who could help those who might otherwise fall through the cracks, or find themselves neglected, forgotten. Alex's team X-Factor, offered redemption, and we all desperately needed it. He's a lot like his big brother, determined, strong, believing in a better world, but he's not as... Scotty, if you know what I mean."

The last question was probably the hardest though. "Well, I don't consider my big blue teddy bear a monster," Jonny said, with a teasing grin, "But, I suppose that's not the answer you want to hear." He caught the boy around the shoulders, and said, "Danger, show Hanky his personal logs regarding his... self experimentation."

"I cannot comply without Dr. McCoy's authorization, Jonny," Danger answered, "Do you give permission for this action, Dr. McCoy?"

Jonny leaned close and said, "Danger's a smart cookie, but she doesn't understand time the way we do. You and Fuzzy-Hank are the same to her. You want answers, all you have to do is authorize access and it will open up for you. Everything your grown up self did that lead to his change, and everything he did afterwards because of it. I'll sit with you and watch it, if you're worried or if it's too much, but whatever you decide, remember, what you are since the change happened has not been changed. You're still the smartest, kindest and most feeling guy I ever met. Even under that heavy carpet, you're the guy who was my bestie when we were kids, and none of us ever saw you as anything other than that."
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Young Beast
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Not Yet Blue and Furry
"I cannot comply without Dr. McCoy's authorization, Jonny," Danger answered, "Do you give permission for this action, Dr. McCoy?"

Jonny leaned close and said, "Danger's a smart cookie, but she doesn't understand time the way we do. You and Fuzzy-Hank are the same to her. You want answers, all you have to do is authorize access and it will open up for you. Everything your grown up self did that lead to his change, and everything he did afterwards because of it. I'll sit with you and watch it, if you're worried or if it's too much, but whatever you decide, remember, what you are since the change happened has not been changed. You're still the smartest, kindest and most feeling guy I ever met. Even under that heavy carpet, you're the guy who was my bestie when we were kids, and none of us ever saw you as anything other than that."


Hank hesitated. It was that old adage about wanting being better than having. What would he find in these files. An experiment gone wrong? The consequences of hubris run amok? Or was it something that happened naturally, something unavoidable?

With a sigh, "I give my permission Danger."

Suddenly the room was lit up with more information than the other four combined. But of course, he was a scientist and he always kept copious and diligent notes.

"Danger, can you please bring forward the notes concerning the change in my..." he looked about searching for how to describe it, "... mutation?"

The floating images, videos, and logs shifted until a particular set came forward. He sifted through detailed notes on the development of a hormone that would be able to suppress the physical manifestations of mutation without affecting the positive traits. At least this was something he started with the right idea.

He finally found his log that summarized the entire experiment. It detailed the struggle with a colleague over his formula. His foolishly testing it on himself and how his competitor had destroyed the antidote he'd prepared meaning he was forever left appearing like the Beast of my namesake.

"Thank you Danger, I'm done." The files vanished.

He turned to Jonny. "I can see now it was a tragic accident, but what I don't understand is why was I working for some corporation? Why wasn't I here with the rest of you?"
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Jonny remembered when Hank first called them, desperate because of what had happened, in pain, scared, angry... the original Jonny had been three weeks past learning that he had pancreatic cancer, that he was going to die, but he hadn't mentioned any of that when he rushed to the side of his best friend, because that wasn't who he was. As the teenager pleaded for answers, Jonny forgot for a moment that this kid was displaced in time, that he himself was just a copy of a dead man, and he slung his arm around his shoulders, broad, even before his transformation.

"Hank, remember what I said about Scott not having anything else," Jonny said, "That wasn't the same with you. You do heap big science and the fact that you're ugly as mud didn't matter to a bunch of other brainiacs. There's more to you then being a big bruiser and offers came in for you to prove it. You didn't need us..." He looked at the kid and gave him a light shake, "I don't mean that you decided you were better than us, or that you didn't want us around, I mean that you had other things to offer, other skills that would save the world, and you wanted that chance to prove it. You did good things, Hank, you do good things, and you have nothing to regret, nothing to be ashamed of. I'm damn proud of you, I really am." He spread his arms and said, "Hell, you're one of the First Class, Hank, a legend, who saves the world. That means something."

"Danger," Jonny looked up at the sky, "I guess it's ok to show Mini-Me-McCoy here a list of his patents, doctorates, speaking engagements and accolades. You have that, don't you?"

"Complying," Danger replied.

Then, the walls were coated with lists, and pictures of Hank receiving medals, and awards, of scientific formulas and complicated equations. So many that Jonny, never the best student, as a man or as a clone, went cross eyed looking at them all. "This is your legacy, Hank... and notice, no one of them mentions that you develop a tendency to shed."
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His eyebrows arched up in surprise as he skimmed through his lists of accomplishments in the sciences. It was all he hoped to do with this life, to do something that would improve the lives of all mankind an it appeared he would do it, someday.

If that meant that along the way he made some mistakes and ended up the poster-boy for hirsute loveliness, then so be it.

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding, "I see," he began. "So... is this thing only good for displaying data records and training?"

He turned to face his older friend, "How did our ideas for a Star Wars simulation pan out? I imagine my older self is a sure-in for Chewbacca?"

Suddenly something that had popped up when he had done one of his earlier web-searches came back to him.

"Also, what is this I hear about Lucasfilm selling out to the Disney? And is it really true that they are going to make another film?" He actually wasn't sure how he felt about Lucas selling out to the corporate entity. Still if it meant more Star Wars in the future it couldn't be a completely bad thing, he thought.

"If I understand it correctly, the original actors are returning? That means no Jar-Jar then shouldn't it?" Hank wasn't as down on the prequel trilogy as many so-called purist, but even he could admit Jar-Jar was possibly the most annoying character ever created?
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And, just like that, the angst was gone.

Hank wasn't like Scott who dwelt on his history, and picked apart the tragedies of his past to try to find a way to prevent them from happening to anyone else.

He wasn't like Jean who analyzed and used deep insights and passions to solve problems, forgiving what needed forgiving and holding people accountable for what couldn't be forgotten.

He wasn't Warren, who could take to the clouds and clear his head metaphorically, finding solace in isolation and understanding the benefit of taking that step back.

And, he certainly wasn't Jonny, not original nor clone, who had learned that life was far too short to make the darkness your home.

Hank was Hank, and while it might have looked, to the layman, that he had ignored much of what Jon had said about the others, that he inward focus was selfish and self centered, it wasn't so. Mama McCoy's bouncing baby boy was a genius, and his train of thought didn't run on just one track. He was processing what he had just learned and would come up with a comprehension in depth enough to make his twinkie loving, thesaurus quoting, hanging from the ceiling persona look like a put on. But it wasn't. This was just Hank. A hulking beast with a heart of gold. A genius who looked like a brute.

"Yeah, Hankie," Jonny smiled, momentarily overwhelmed with affection for the boy he only had second hand memories of, "Lucas's neck goiter ate his brain."

He kept his arm around the teen and said, "Danger, bring up the Star Wars scenario... I have a need to save the universe."

Work would come later. When else would they have this moment?

Life was sometimes hard for mutants, but sometimes... it was a miracle.




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