xp_logs | Kevin & Hank | Monday afternoon

Now that Kevin is a free man legally and has had his obligatory vanishing he goes down to see Hank so the weirdness of his mutation can finally be brought to light.

The time had come to fess up to the weirdness of his mutation. Kevin had put it off until after he had successfully won his freedom back from the justice system - or rather had Angel's mom win it back for him. Then he'd put it off until after he'd disappeared for a week. The ability to leave, not tell anyone where he was going and not worry about being locked up for it was slightly intoxicating. Now that Kevin was back, though, he was busy being responsible. That meant he was headed down to the labs to find Dr. McCoy. Of course, Kevin now thought of the man as being just as likely to be making his own twinkies as he was to be doing something insanely smart, complex and sciency. "'Sciency ain't a word, Kevin," he told himself aloud while he walked down the hall to peer through the various lab windows.

Fortunately for Hank, there was not to be a repeat of the awkward intrusion upon his trying to develop the perfect snack-cake. This time the blue doctor was simply in his office, going through a journal article that Jean had thought he might find fascinating. At the knock on his door he set down the touch-pad and looked up, thankful for a reprieve from the dry writing. "Enter," he said thankfully.

Kevin poked his head in through the door first, as if making sure he wasn't coming in on any cream filling. "Hey, you got a minute?" When there was no twinkie-making in sight the Southerner slid through the door, closing it behind himself. Now, the real question was how he could broach the topic at hand without simply blurting it out more or less. He wasn't really sure there was a graceful way of saying he'd been hiding the fact that his powers had been all sorts of out of whack for months.

Hank smiled and motioned for the seat across from him on the subordinate side of the desk. "Mister Ford, exonerated of all wrong doing and again a free man. What can I do for you today, sir?" The blue doctor interlaced his fingers behind his head and leaned back, glad for the distraction.

The word "sheepish" practically streaked itself across Kevin's face in neon as he absently scratched the back of his head. His silence following sitting made it increasingly obvious he was guilty of something. "Um, well...blood tests? Or whatever sorta tests you do to look at my DNA."

After a beat of silence filled the room, Hank let himself lean forward, resting his elbows on the mahogany desk before him. "Would I be looking for anything in particular?" a bushy blue eyebrow went up in a questioning tone.

"Uh...yeah." Mental preparation for the lecture about how he shouldn't have hidden this development was already under way. "You'd be looking for why my mutation doesn't work some of the time now. Or maybe it's most of the time. Ah'm not sure."

The other eyebrow went up in surprise, "You say your powers aren't working?" Hank stood up and grabbed his lab coat and stethescope off the coat rack in the corner before heading toward the doorway. "Well, let's see what we can find. When did this start?"

"Ah'm not really sure," Kevin admitted with the appropriate level of shame in his voice. Dutifully, he got up to follow Hank. "Ah noticed in September, but it coulda been any time after Ah took my powers back. Ah don't really set myself up for touchin' stuff all the time and Ah took a hiatus on powers training when Ah was doped up all the time so Ah'd sit still long enough for my ribs to heal back in August and September. It's sorta like they have a delay trigger or something. Like Ah try and it doesn't work for a while and then the decay kicks in. But then sometimes it works right away."

"Hmm," Hank pondered as he led the younger man to an examine room. "So, just to be clear, your abilities seem to be on some sort of a delay?" while this situation wasn't necessarily unprecedented, it wasn't very common and often signaled some major issues for the young mutant involved.

"Sorta. It's like Ah touch something and my mutation's gone, but then eventually starts working again. And it's not like it always takes the same amount of time to start working again, either." Kevin wasn't a fan of his mutation, that was no secret. He didn't mind them not working, he just didn't want to let himself get fooled into thinking he was safer than he really was. When he thought he was safe someone would get hurt.

In the past minute, Hank had gone from happy to surprised and now was switching to concerned- it was never a good sign if someone's gifts began to function erratically. "Alright, Mister Ford, with your consent then- I'd like to take some blood for further analysis, then run a routine physical, which you're overdue for by the way. Then you and I will head down to the danger room so I can see first hand what you're talking about. I'll take all the data I collect and if we need you back for further tests today, I will call you directly. How does that sound?"

"Ah don't think you really need the danger room for me," Kevin told him even as he pushed his sleeve up over his elbow. His glove was then pushed down from his elbow to his wrist in order to expose his skin beneath. "All Ah really need is something to decay. Gauze, tongue depressors, whatever you don't mind not keepin' around, really. 'Sides, danger room is all projections, isn't it? Ah don't think they're organic anyway so it wouldn't work, right?"

Hank made a mental note to improve the simulations in the danger room so that Kevin could actually work his abilities there. "I was more speaking of containment, just as a precaution, which we would take for anyone having difficulties with their powers. However, given the nature of your ability, let me take your blood sample and then you can turn all the tongue depressors you'd like into unrecognizable piles of dust." The doctor smiled and pulled open a drawer, removing a metal tray covered in a tight fitting cellophane. "I know you're not entirely fond of we in the medical field given your time at Muir and the lack of results that they were able to come up with, but I do need to ask...why did you take so long to come to us about this?"

"Ah've got nothing against doctors. Ah don't like Muir and it's got nothin' to do with their answers. They said there's no off switch and that's all Ah needed to know, really. The reason Ah don't like Muir is 'cause Ah don't like being a test subject, or feelin' like one anyway." He began to shrug but stopped himself since there was a needle that needed to poke him soon. Kevin reminded himself to sit still. "Ah didn't say anythin' 'cause Ah wanted my freedom and if Ah told people 'bout this Ah'd never get it. You have any idea what it's like not gettin' to leave the state without Professor Xavier's OK? He never said no, but that ain't the point. My parents are dead, Ah'm over eighteen and Ah need permission to leave the state or go anywhere for more'n three days. And Ah need federal OK to leave the country. Ah wanted out of my cage." Which was precisely why Kevin had vanished for a week with nothing more than notice on the journals that he was leaving town.

Furrowing his brow, Hank found the vein and carefully pierced it with the needle, starting the flow of the warm, red liquid into a vial. "It was my understanding that you weren't under custody of the professor anymore, now that your legal tribulations have been closed." He made a note as he changed vials to amend Kevin's charts accordingly, "So, if I'm understanding you correctly, you were afraid we'd report your change in powers to the authorities and you'd be, shall we say, grounded, again?"

"No, you're getting the sequence wrong. Ah'm telling you now because Ah've got my freedom. They only gave it to me because my therapist said Ah've been seeing him regularly and that Ah'm well adjusted now or something and there was written account that Ah've got my powers under enough control that Ah'm not a danger to society. If Ah told you before that Ah can't control 'em at all then you'd be obligated to report that. Ah never would have had a chance to get my freedom at all. If whatever this is ends up being permanent and Ah don't have any way of knowing if my powers are on or off and Ah can't control 'em as well when they're on as Ah could before then Ah'd end up thirty and living here or at the west coast annex. Ah couldn't even have the option of living anywhere else before." Right now Kevin had no plans to move out of the mansion, but he wanted to eventually. He made a fair bit of money selling his art and he could feasibly live off his art maybe. If it weren't for court order, however, he'd likely have left the mansion permanently years ago.

Hank nodded, removing the needle, "There we go. Don't suppose you're going to be wanting a lollipop?" The doctor smiled and sat down on a rolling stool. Before the younger mutant could answer, Hank pressed on, "Given your status as a ward of the professor, I would have had an obligation to report the findings to him and if he felt so compelled to pass that information on to the courts, then- I suppose- he would have, so I can understand that. Now, the law is on your side. I am unable to legally release the information you give to me as your physician to anyone. So you have no need to worry." The doctor rolled over to a nearby counter and set the tray down, stripping off his gloves and dumping them into the medical waste container on the wall. "That being said...I would, with your consent, like to bring the rest of our medical staff up to speed on this- just the one's here at the mansion- depending on the results of your tests."

"It's only really Doctor Grey-Summers anyway, right? Ah don't really care if you tell the medical staff. Ah figure all the weird mutation stuff gets 'round anyway." With his luck, though, he'd end up with Laurie badgering him with questions when she found out there were strange things going on with his mutation. Now he'd just be The Sometimes Death Touch Kid. Catchy. Kevin pulled his glove up and his sleeve down until his skin was once again hidden from the world.

"Doctor Grey-Summers, Doctor Voght and myself are the ones with access to medical records- though we do have an intern, but don't bring her in on consultations." Hank set the glass container down on the exam table next to the young man, "Alright, let's see what you can do...or rather, are having difficulty doing."

Kevin frowned at the container of tongue depressors. "Mister Stick ain't gonna appreciate this," he muttered to himself as he pulled the glove off his left hand. The removed glove got stuffed into a back pocket before his right hand reached out and pulled out one of the tongue depressors. He wasn't sure what this might mean, what Dr. McCoy might infer from this demonstration, and that made him a bit nervous.

When Kevin's fingertip touched the smooth, wooden edge a familiar tug low in his stomach came. Practice had let to instinct directing the edges of the depressor to decay away first. Kevin was noticeably surprised that it worked that easily for him. Decay edged into the wood from one point and a swirling pattern began to eat its way through the flattened stick. Concentration and the familiarity of things working as they ought to helped calm Kevin. Until his pattern suddenly stopped. It just stopped and that tugging sensation in his gut vanished.

The bare fingertip remained in contact with the tongue depressor for several more moments of nothing before Kevin pulled it away from his skin. "See? Ah mean, usually it's the other way. It doesn't work, then it does." He handed over the tongue depressor with it's swirls carved through half of it.

Hank examined the artistically decayed depressor carefully- it was certainly disconcerting that it was still there at all. A thought came to the doctor as he set the stick down on the counter, next to the blood samples. "A thought occurs to me, would you mind if I monitored your heart rate while you decayed another ten cent depressor?"

"My heart rate? Sure, Why would Ah mind?" It seemed like a stupid thing to mind, really. Kevin had come to tell Dr. McCoy something was up so he could figure out what it was and what it meant. The fact that he would stand in the way of the doctor doing it would negate the whole purpose, wouldn't it?

With a quick nod, Hank disappeared into the hallway, returning a few moments later with an electrocardiogram machine on wheels. Another few moments passed before it was set up and the nodes were connected to Kevin by a winding series of wires leading back into the machine. "Alright, we need to establish a base reading before I examine this with your abilities in use." The doctor flipped on the machine and slipped off his glasses, "So aside from the fluctuations in your abilities, how are you feeling?"

Kevin looked down at his wrists where the electrodes were affixed. He had half expected the gel to decay away but it must have been inorganic somehow. Wasn't silicone inorganic? His brain didn't feel like slogging through the science needed to understand his mutation at the moment. He had an actual scientist for that. A foot twitched and he registered the feeling of the electrode on that ankle. "Feeling? Fine. Ah mean, Ah've got a lot less stress than Ah used to since the court cleared all my restrictions and wiped my suspended sentence. But it was a three year sentence and it's been over three years so that shoulda been wiped already, right?" He shrugged. There was nothing like being convicted of manslaughter when the victim was your dad. "Sorta bored, though. Not 'cause of court. Ah didn't take classes this semester so Ah've got more free time to fill on my own and that hasn't happened in a while."

"We could always use your assistance in the continuing improvements to the danger room if your interested," Hank said, absently looking over the ticker that tracked Kevin's heart rate and other vitals. "I think we finally have the scent dispersers working correctly," the doctor said proudly, looking up at the boy. "There are so many more things that have been put on my list in the past few weeks...honestly, I'm not sure I will be able to work the solutions on my own."

"Unless you want metal stuff built Ah'm pretty much useless with the danger room." Or so he had assumed. Kevin had never actually been in the danger room because he'd never gone the route of becoming an X-Men trainee. And he likely never would. "If Ah can actually help and stuff then sure, Ah'll help. But Ah'm not real good with technology."

"There is more to programming the danger room than programming and fabrication," Hank fished a depressor out of the jar with his index and middle finger. "We always need people to test the programs and I was thinking we might be able to add some sort of organic material to the solid mechanical bots that we project our holograms around." He held the piece of wood out to the young man, "Whenever you're ready."

"So throw a cushion on 'em. Seems pretty easy to me." Kevin took the new tongue depressor with his bare hand and nothing happened. There was no tug, no pull and certainly no decaying. He focused, trying to somehow make his mutation work. It always just did. All on it's own. He had no idea how to make it. He tried visualizing it. That didn't help. His concentration grew frustrated. His hand tightened on it with his increasing frustration and then it quickly grew thinner. Kevin startled at the dusty feel under his fingers realized what was happening when he noticed that tug in his stomach. He went about directing the flow of the decay, eating patterns into the surface like etchings. Direction was the form of control his training had taken and Kevin was pretty decent at it, especially on smaller pieces of dense material like wood. He obliterated more fragile things like cotton.

As his frustration ebbed, however, the progress of his etching did as well. He didn't notice until it stopped completely and the ash shook free of the remaining wood. It was clearly visible that the etching had petered out. Now he just stared at it in confusion before handing it back to Hank.

Hank set down the piece of artwork and helped Kevin remove the nodes, "You'll want to wash the glue off, it causes a great deal of trouble with clothes." The doctor tore the readout off and turned off the machine, setting the paper findings next to the blood samples. "Alright, Kevin, I'll look over what I have here and we'll see what we find. I should have the tests finished by this afternoon."

"Alright, thanks." He kept his sleeves up and his gloves off until he could get the glue off. One glove was kept in hand, however, so he could use it to touch stuff if he needed to. Just what he'd wanted, come down to the medlab and be released all sticky. At least his mutation being on the fritz had made soap stick around a lot longer. "But for the record, if your conclusions come to needing to stick me in an oven or something Ah'm totally running away. And stealing your twinkie stash."

"Then I know where to keep my stash of snack cakes- in the aformentioned oven," Hank chuckled and motioned for the door. "Don't worry too much, Kevin, I am sure its nothing too serious," to himself Hank added, 'I'll do enough worrying for the both of us,'.

"Serious is relative," Kevin told him before heading out the door.