MARVEL: RE-DO

[Draul St. Cross POV]

In hindsight, I knew something like this could happen.

Not the part where Charles Xavier would actually try to mind rape me, but I didn’t put it pass him to try hence the cautiousness but I guess even that wasn’t enough as he literary tried to brainwash me the same day he met me.

The only reason I didn’t flip Jean off the first time she tried it was that it was only a probe, a truthseeking probe. If she had tried it more than once then…

But Charles was different, he literally tried to brainwash me.

My time with HYDRA taught me how to read brain waves through the way they vibrated. Their intentions were clear to me once I managed to study it.

While Jean’s was more of a precaution, Charles' was downright neural remodeling. He wanted to change something about me, what? I didn’t know nor did I care but for the simple fact he tried to brainwash me Charles was definitely on my X list.

What happened after that was a blur. All I saw was flashes – a fight. Me versus the X-Men, though I didn’t know who won. Though I did wonder how I was able to fare against their whole lineup.

I saw Logan, Scott, Piotr, Iceman, John and Storm in the images. I didn’t know how long I lasted against them but given how I could fight against them I’d say whatever happened to me was the reason.

And that brought me to my present issue.

They really were drawbacks from the Hulk’s serum. I thought I would be able to absorb the gamma radiation and Banner's serum without the Hulking effect but I guess I was too naïve.

I did retain an aspect of the Hulk; Anger.

An all too common trigger given the kind of work I did. Hopefully it was just anger because if I found out that any rise in my heartbeat doomed me to lose control of my faculties, I’ll be damned if I don’t find a way to get rid of it.

Thankfully, from the looks of it my mental upgrades work. Turns out that wiring my brain to focus my mind on a singular objective with absolute calm when it is being overwhelmed by negative emotions was a smart move on my part.

Fortunately for me it worked but unfortunately only partly of it did. Turns out the anger I felt was strong enough to seep through the façade of calm I forced on myself. 

Even now the urge to kill Xavier was still dancing around my mind.

I had my own suspicions of why I broke down in rage, which at the point was no longer suspicions but possible truths.

Trauma.

Turns out the trauma HYDRA gave me wasn’t completely dealt with but just locked down in the deepest part of my subconscious. Taking a hulk serum on top of a repressed trauma was just kicking myself in the shin. 

Given that the different versions of the Hulk was just a physical representation of Bruce Banner's childhood traumas it wasn’t surprising that I’ll have a rage mode. The only silver lining was that I didn’t turn in a hulking red monster – I doubt my color would be green – while I thrashed around in a murder spree.

And here I was thinking I could take the week off in a conducive environment. 

Talk about a drag.

And it hadn’t even been a whole day since my evolution. From all I know, I took the serum yesterday and today I find myself almost getting one upped by a wanna be Dumbledore. While he was an OG baldy, he was still too young to be a real Dumbles.

I opened my eyes and the first thing that greeted me was a monstrous blue face. If it wasn’t for my mind still keeping me calm I probably would have freaked out. Or lash out, I didn’t know anymore.

“Do you mind?” I asked the oversized Stitch with glasses.

“Oh sorry about that.”

“Where’s Charles?” He flinched at that question and I could see that he was already uncomfortable with my dead gaze.

“Please calm down, the others are waiting for you.” He tried his best not to fidget but I could see it in his whole person.

I left the bed and widened my senses and immediately caught sight of the people, or rather the man I wanted to meet.

I walked to the meeting room where all whole gang was waiting.

The moment I opened the door, the entire atmosphere turned oppressive as whatever chatter they were having died down leaving only the oppressive silence as I walked in increasing the already rising tension.

The moment I laid eyes on him, the anger in me flared once more and I think they all noticed since they all took an attack stance.

“Woah, calm down bud.” Logan tried to placate me but all I felt was calm. It was contradicting to the anger I could still feel.

“I’m calm.” 

“I don’t know about you but your eyes says otherwise.” Logan said, which prompted me to look at the screen on the wall and saw that yes, my eyes were red. Not Superman red but more like Teenwolf Alpha red.

Seeing my eyes like that I didn’t even try to reel it in, now wasn’t the time.

I looked at Charles who had a regretful expression on his face which I called bullshit.

“Will you start or do you want me to?” I asked Charles.

The room became quiet at that.

“Mr. St. Cross, while I understand your anger what I did was only for your go-” I didn’t let him finish as an arrow shot for his head that instant. If it wasn’t for Colossus who took the hit because of his fast reaction as he stood behind Xavier the bastard’s head would have exploded.

The moment Colossus was hit the sky outside changed colors immediately taking on a dark atmosphere that complemented the room.

“Say another lie again and I promise you, you won’t know when you died.” Did he take me for a fool? He actually thought I would fall for that.

His face had shock written on it, not expecting I would attack him so soon.

“Please calm d-” Arrows immediately appeared around me which he took as a warning since he immediately stopped what he was trying to say. 

“Right now I’m calm, for your own life I’d advise you not to push me.”

“Why?”

At that he kept quiet which only fueled my gentle flowing anger which was shown as the arrows all gained a dangerous glow to them as they started spinning.

“Why'd you do it?” I asked him again.

“Do what?” This time it was Ororo who asked.

“Your Professor tried to brainwash me last night.” I told them. Some of them had expressions of shock on their faces while others had disbelief.

“I didn’t try to brainwash you.” Charles said.

“Don’t try to lie to me Charles, I know what brainwashing feels like.” He simply didn’t know how he was so infinitesimally close to blowing off my top.

“You have to understand, your ability is dangerous! Not just to you but everyone.” Not just me, even the others looked surprised at what he said, although for different reasons. Mine was for his hypocrisy.

“Says the man who can literally brainwash people.” That shut him up from any retort he had.

“What do you mean his ability is dangerous?” For some reason Ororo and Logan were the only ones who had any semblance of calm in their faces.

“According to Hank, your ability affinity lies in destruction. And from what they told me about last night, it would very well seem so. I felt your signal when I used Cerebro yesterday and the energy I read from it was unmatched by any mutant I’ve ever seen before, surpassing even the Omega-class. It was something no other mutant could hope to match up with, not even Eric or any other mutant we’ve come up against was comparable to what I felt from you so that’s why I had the team pick you up yesterday. Concerned about whatever trauma or nightmare you were burdened with due to your abilities and past experiences, I sought to help you restrain your ability so you wouldn’t lose control of it and fall to the influence of your powers as was seen by the unfortunate accident of last night.”

To say I was speechless would be an understatement, even the arrows I conjured up fizzled out of existence.

Charles was full of shit. And it surprised me how none of them could tell.

“So in simpler words, you were scared of my power and decided it was your right to judge how I use it? God! You are more of a hypocrite than I thought. I mean it wouldn’t surprise me if you decided to mess with one of your students' brains just to assure your insecurities.” 

I walked out of the room. If I stayed in there any longer, I had no doubt that I would kill Charles, all else be damned. 

The only reason I even deemed to hear him out was that Charles was pivotal to the mutant race. If not for him and his team stopping Magneto and every other X-Men villain at every turn, then there would have been a witch hunt for the mutant race, which would have drove them to the brink of extinction.

He was scum, true. But he was a necessary scum.

…

[Back In The Office]

The room was silent after Draul left, no one knew what to say.

“So you decided it was okay to brainwash someone you just met because you were scared of his mutant powers eh?” Logan asked with a dead calm in his voice.

“Logan you have to understand, his abilities are different. They are dangerous if he ever fails to control them. All I did was a necessary precaution should he fail to control it.”

“And since when did we start judging people because of the dangers their ability possessed?” Logan asked.

“For crying out loud, this is a goddamned school full with people of similar and diverse abilities. What is to prevent someone like Kurt from teleporting to the White House and killing the President? Or Ororo from destroying a city with a hurricane?” Logan asked as his voice raised with every word. “Everyone in this building is a threat to society should they ever feel the need, so are you just going to brainwash all of them so that they don’t or maybe you already did, who knows?”

“What the fuck man? How can you even say that?” Scott was angered by Logan’s last comment.

“Say what? He just proved he’d do it if HE deemed it necessary, what’s to say he hasn’t done so before. There’s gotta be a precedent right? You seriously don’t believe this is the first time something like this has happened, do you?” Logan retorted.

“And besides, how would we know if he’s truly dangerous? For all we know Charles just ensured he would.”

It was at that point that the silent Hank McCoy filtered into the conversation.

“While the matter of brainwashing is still very sensitive and I do disagree with it, I however agree with the fact that Mr. St. Cross is truly dangerous.”

“What do you mean?” Jean asked.

“I ran some tests on him yesterday when he was still sleeping and what I found out was worrying to say the least.”

“What did you discover?” The silent Charles asked.

Hank walked to the screen and slotted in an hard drive and after a few clicks and tap, he brought up a presentation of a cell.

“I wanted to see how his body stored energy and also see if there were any similarities with his and Scott’s when I came across this.” He pointed at the cell and played the presentation.

“His cells are constantly in hyper drive, storing massive amounts of energy from any nearby viable source; Heat, cold, nuclear, fission, fusion. It’s in a constant motion of absorbing and recycling energy that in a way should be impossible.”

“So he’s a power tank, we all know that.”

“That you do but not this.” He clicked on the remote and this time it was another video of cells with a chart; a comparison. “This is a comparison with his cells and that of a normal human. The number of cells in the human body total above 37 trillion, with each producing .07 volts of electricity it brings the amount of energy produced to over 2.6 trillion volts. Note that a bolt of lightning is around a billion in volts.” He paused there to gain their attention as he clicked to display the next slide.

“This is his cell.” What they saw wasn’t a round concave cell but a miniature sun. “The number of cells in his body are quadruple that of a human and every single one of them produces more than the entire human body. Over ten times the sum total of energy produced by humans is what a single one of his does. And the worst part is all of them, every single one are active and the energy from them can be harnessed…. At any time. If science were to theorize every single human as walking nukes, then the amount of energy in his body is enough to destroy both Earth and Mars.”

While there may not all be science nerds, they understood one fact from what Hank said:

“You heard that, that dude is a freaking time bomb.” Scott said.

“Yeah, but the doc also said that so is every fucking person on the planet.” Logan immediately spat out.

“Gahh! You saw how he was yesterday, and he’s still growing stronger. Professor Charles wasn’t wrong to put a stop to it.” Scott still stubbornly defended.

“Scott it isn’t a matter of whether he was wrong or right, it’s the aesthetics of it. It wasn’t his call to make. If he keeps making decisions he believes are best, then that means we are all chickens at his farm, waiting to be butchered just because someone said so… or ‘thought’ so.” John said, having been silent throughout the whole thing.

“Fuck.”