Time Is On Your Side (Part Five)

Mister Logan dragged me to New York to see these specialists, and he was none too pleased about it. I don't see why though. I guess he figured I'd embarrass him in front of the goddamn Fantastic Four.

…Yeah. That was who had been called to take a look at my potentially destructive future.

It was a major mind trip, flying the Blackbird into the Baxter Building. The entire way there, Logan was telling me not to fuck up or do anything dumb. Thankfully, it had been a remarkably short flight.

"Rule number five: don't touch anything," He barked from the nearby as I sat on an examination table in my underwear. I felt drained by the preemptive lecture, "Rule number six: don't run your mouth."

"-I'm gonna break that one," I managed to slip in as Mister Fantastic attached more sensors to me.

Mister Logan growled back at me, "I'm serious, kid. We're calling in a favor for this one. A second favor, actually. And by that, I mean I'm calling in a favor. For you. Fucking waste of a favor," He looked back in the middle of his griping to find me with my arms wide open, "What are you doing?"

"Waiting on my hug. Because you love me. I knew you had a soft spot for me," The sound of the claws on one of his hands popping got me to put my arms down, "I was just kidding."

"Please, don't damage any of the equipment, Logan," Mister Fantastic said, chiding the angry senior X-Man and protecting me.

Logan harumphed and got up from his seat, slapping a quiet, introspective Mister Rasputin on the shoulder as he passed by him near the door, "Come on, Tin Man. Time's a wastin'. Let's see if Sue has anything for us."

Mister Rasputin had also come along, deciding to kill two birds with one stone. He wanted a conversation about Miss Pryde's whereabouts and the progress, or lack thereof, when it came to getting her home. I hoped I wouldn't catch the details of that.

Once I was settled, my teachers walked off, leaving me lying on a table alone inside of a lab. A machine looming over me hummed, doing… whatever it was doing. The grown folks had other things to see to.

"Alright, Bellamy," Mister Fantastic said, "My machine is set to determine your internal makeup; the various processes going on inside of your body that allow your powers to function. I'm aware that mutants oftentimes have unique physical properties that aren't always readily noticeable. With this, we can probe you down to the very cell, look for any variances from the common human biology and determine what it is that sets you apart, and if it's something that needs to be closely monitored."

I stared at him, wondering how to politely tell him that everything that had just come out of his mouth went clear over my head, "…I'm sorry Dr. Richards, I got about thirty percent of that," I said apologetically, "My science chops are more computer and programming related," And even then, I was, like, university-level.

He smiled the smile of a man used to dumbing things down for people in layman's terms, "This machine will help me determine the physical nature of your powers, so we can see if there's anything to fear," He reiterated, "I hope you're comfortable. This may take a while. About as long as a CAT scan. I can assure you, it's very thorough."

"You're fine. I've got more time in a day than most people," I said. In reality though, sitting there getting scanned, or whatever the hell was happening to me, was painfully boring.

Dr. Richards seemed to be using the time to work on other things, and I wished I could move. I would have spent the time doing my homework, but instead I had to wait until later. Damn it, I had an essay due in history class that I'd been procrastinating on.

I lingered on a table, staring directly into the light above that scanned my entire body. My brain almost turned off, until I turned to the side and found a little blond kid in a Fantastic Four jumpsuit staring at me. I couldn't tell how old he was. Younger than eight, maybe.

I was bored, and freaking out Mister Fantastic's kid by staring him down probably wouldn't go over too well, so I tried to engage him a bit, "Uh… hey there, little guy," I didn't know what to say. I was terrible with kids. They scared the shit out of me. You couldn't screw up with them the way you could with older people, otherwise you might mess them up, "What's going on? You doing good?"

He walked up closer, but stopped short of the containment wall that was keeping the light from Mister Fantastic's machine all on me, "Are you a mutant?"

Well, that was a straightforward question. I could work with that, "Yeah, I am. I go to the school the X-Men run and everything."

He put his hands on the wall and started hopping up and down, "That's so cool! I'm a mutant too!" He said excitedly, "What do you do?"

I held up a hand and made it glow to illustrate, "I do stuff with light. Blast stuff, power myself up. Those kinds of things. At least, I think so," I said, feeling the frown on my face, "Some stuff came up where I'm not exactly sure what my powers do exactly anymore."

"Oh," He said with big, wide eyes, "Is daddy helping you?"

I looked over at Mr. Richards, fully engrossed in whatever else he was doing while his machine was checking me out, "Yeah, he's working on it... and other things, I guess," I said lamely before turning the topic to him, "What's your name, little buddy?"

"Franklin."

"Franklin, huh? Well, I'm Bellamy."

And that was how I met Mister Fantastic's kid. I expected some kind of brilliant egg head that would make me feel like a moron because he was a genius and I wasn't. I mean... that would happen later with another Richards kid, but not Franklin.

The two of us just hung out and talked while my test was going on. It was a welcome distraction. He just asked me things and told me about what he'd seen and what his family had done. The little runt had big stories, and a lot of questions.

"Let's see," I said, in the midst of answering one of those questions, "I've been in space. I've been to other planets. I've never been to another dimension, and I've never time-traveled. I've been attacked by someone from the future though... err, allegedly."

The talk of me getting into a fight excited Franklin, "Did'ja beat him up?"

"Of course, I did," I said, knowingly preening in front of the boy. My ego was primed and ready for some much-needed hero worship, "You didn't know? I'm one of the X-Men. I'm strong. Not just anyone can smack me around."

Franklin tried his best to swell up and look badass. It was more hilarious than anything else, "Betcha I'm stronger than you!"

I didn't mean to laugh in the kid's face, but I did... because I'm an asshole, "I'm sure you are. I'll tell you what; drink your milk, take your vitamins, and say your prayers. Then maybe one day you can be big and strong like me!"

If I could go back in time and slap my past self across the face. Dear lord, I had no idea what I was saying at the time.

The light shining down on me changed colors and the machine scanning me gave off a noise, getting Dr. Richards to look up from his other work, "Alright, I think that should do it, Bellamy. You can go ahead and get dressed."

I exited the containment wall and poked Franklin, getting him to run me down and hit me in the side of the leg until I picked him up under one arm like a sack, "Here. I believe this is yours," I said, depositing him in front of his dad while I walked past him to get to my clothes, "I've gotta go put on some pants."

Once I was properly dressed, Franklin had been sent out of the room while one of the smartest people in the world sat me down and tried to figure out how to explain what he'd figured out about my powers and what exactly they did to me.

Dr. Richards more or less took me to school on my own shit, which really shouldn't have surprised me. It was why I'd been dragged off to see him, more or less.

"I guess we should begin with how you even gather energy in the first place," The man said, choosing an area to start from, "Your skin acts as a solar cell, drawing light in. From that point however, things are wildly different. Instead of converting the light into electricity, you simply store it."

...Okay? I knew that much. I didn't shoot people with electricity. I shot them with light-generated plasma. I needed a little more than that, "What, like in an organ or something?" Did I have an extra organ just for storing light energy? Like an internal battery?

"Not quite," Dr. Richards explained, showing me images of something that I couldn't recognize. He knew what it was though, so good for him, "Do you see this? The second source of energy in your body circulates constantly, which lends itself to your insomnia. But it isn't supplementary – it's vital. Whatever is stored goes into the cells that comprise your organs. The reason a complete loss of energy would be fatal for you is because it would equal organ failure."

"What I absorb circulates through my whole body, like blood?" I asked, trying to put together more pieces for myself instead of struggling to understand it from a goddamn genius, "It would definitely explain why fluorescent light and LEDs mess me up when they're my main light source."

"Artificial junk lighting, for you, works like junk food," Dr. Richards commented on my 'nutrition' with a chuckle, "Anyway, as you get older and grow more accustomed to the energy, you'll definitely expand what you can hold. You'll also find new sources to draw from and your body get used to those. But you're also gathering energy quicker than you used to in order to compensate."

This was all wonderful. It wasn't what I needed to know though, "How dangerous am I?"

Enough fumble-fucking around. There was point to all of this. It was time that we got to it.

Dr. Richards seemed a bit put off by the sudden shift in topic on my powers, but rolled with it nevertheless, "I suppose that is what you came here to find out," He said before laying things out for me, "...If you felt like it right now, you could do a good amount of damage, depending on where you were. Here in New York, considering your training and the power currently available to you, maybe a few blocks before someone with the ability to stop you stepped in. In Smalltown, USA, though, you could probably raze the place to the ground in an afternoon if you wanted to."

"Could I destroy the planet?"

"Earth? Absolutely not."

A spark of hope lit up inside of me, "Even if I overloaded?" I asked.

Dr. Richards let out a laugh, "If you absorbed more energy than your body could handle, you wouldn't destroy the world. You wouldn't destroy New York. You can't destroy a full town. A neighborhood, maybe. Maybe."

Hearing that gave me no small measure of relief. I mean, overloading in any scenario was bad, but if I wouldn't do that much damage, it wasn't so terrible by comparison, "So, if someone told me that I would destroy Earth way out in the future, they'd be lying?"

He hesitated, and my relief all but dried up. It was never good when anyone hesitated while answering an important question, "In the future? How far in the future?" The more he said, the more my heart sank, "I meant you wouldn't be able to do it now, but at the rate your powers are expanding... I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility."

If cursing out loud wouldn't have been so disrespectful, I absolutely would have, "I know these questions are getting really specific, but do you have, like, a timetable here?"

"I would say… by the time you're 25 years old?"

25 years old? Skip said I destroy the world in 30 years! Although, I guess just because I get strong enough to do it before then doesn't mean I automatically do it. Well wasn't all of that just a cold slap in the groin?

I stood up, stiff and uncomfortable. There was a lot to think about, and not much I could do about it in the moment. There was a possibility that all of this was real, "Thank you, Dr. Richards. I appreciate you taking the time to see me."

Being miffed was no reason not to be polite. There was no need to shoot the messenger, so to speak, but I was not happy. Dr. Richards obviously knew it. It showed on his face when he got up to shake my hand, "Think nothing of it, Bellamy. Wolverine tells me you're a bright young man. Determined as well."

I snorted in disbelief, "He actually said something nice about me?"

"...Well, what he called you had 'smart' in it," Oh. He called me a smart-ass. Got it, "And stubborn is another word for determined," Realizing he was killing his own argument, he stopped rambling, "The point is, you're the one in control of yourself. It's your power. If an issue arises somewhere in the future, I don't doubt you can find a way to solve it."

Yeah. That sounded really nice. It sounded like something an adult was supposed to say to encourage a kid. The only thing was, I was sixteen, not ten. And maybe it still would have worked, but I was a superhero-in-training, and I'd had too many snafus by this point to just buy someone else's spiel, "Oh yeah? How can you say that and mean it? You don't even know me, man. You just met me today."

Dr. Richards gave me a stern, lecturing look, "Because of how upset you seem. But it's not the kind of upset where you're giving up," He said, "I know that look in your eyes. The look of a man that refuses to accept that there's no viable solution. I've known many men who've accomplished great things, Bellamy. Things that most people thought were impossible. They've all had that look."

If Mister Fantastic was telling me to sack up and get something done, who was I to tell him I wasn't man enough to do it? It wasn't like I needed it done by tomorrow. Rome wasn't built in a day, after all.

With that in mind, I puffed my chest out and tried to wrestle back some of my swagger, "Well, I spent the last hour telling your son how awesome I am. I can't just go and lie to a little kid, can I? I'm not that much of a jerk."

Dr. Richards took my arrogant reply in good form. From what I heard, he was a pretty arrogant guy himself, "I'll be sure to hold you to that. Good luck, Bellamy."

I shook my head, "Doctor, I think the next time I get a lucky break since getting my powers will be the first time."

But from my view, relying on luck to get you through something was for losers. A better plan was just to make sure you were good enough to deal with it.