Jean & Garrison: Weird Science

[xp_dominion]

Kane keeps his promise to Jean and joins her to be examined by Bruce Banner. Unfortunately, a teammate of his drops by to 'help'.



Kane hadn't been to the Avengers section of Triskelion before, despite a few offers. And now he was following Jean Grey to the bank of elevators, looping his visitor pass over his neck. They got into the elevator and once the doors closed, he paused.

"OK, so again, tell me how you know Bruce Banner?"

"I retrieved his mind from the recesses of his big green alter ego when we were fighting the Avengers that one time," Jean said casually, as if this were something they did every day.

"We kept in touch." She glanced around, more and more consciously aware of where they were the longer they stood in the elevator.

"Mostly online though. This...is a first for me too."

"Huh. I mean, occasionally I get texts from Thor, but it's been weird ever since he killed me that one time." Kane said. He had never mentioned Brand's offer to try and make him an Avenger to anyone, and thought it best to leave that private. "I mean, I've fought against them and with them... oh, yeah, one time Hulk kicked the crap out of Marie and I. Yeah, this is going to be awkward, eh?"

Jean immediately nodded. "Yep," she said, without hesitation. A moment passed, she then arched a brow.

"...Thor killed you one time?"

She hadn't memorized everyone's file. There were way too many people with way too many stories, often larger than life.

"Kinda. I mean, I caught Mjolnir, but when the Valkyries came to collect me, my friend told them to fuck off. It's... complicated." Kane said with a shrug. "Now, he just wants to get beers."

The explanation only resulted in more squinting. "So...he was trying to kill you by throwing Mjolnir? Or was that an accident? I thought he was a good thunder god..." Jean paused. "I'm going to need a chart or something when we get home."

"He wasn't throwing. It was an execution. Had issues with... the Enchantress or something. It was a decade ago though." He said, waving his hand away as the elevator pinged and the doors opened.

Eyes widening, Jean had to slowly blink to process. "That is definitely going to be a 'to be continued' story for the ride home," she said pointedly, stepping out and looking for signs for the laboratory.

"They get to have their science on the 8th floor. Fancy."

"Well, I'd assume-" He said as their visitor badges were scanned and they were ushered through. As they went through the door, his words trailed off. "... I'd assume... wow." The room they'd been sent into was filled with the most advanced of Stark's lab technology. Most of it was never put to market, and almost half were custom builds by the best minds on the Avengers.

Jean gave a wordless nod, staring up at the tech with a sense of wonder. The things they could do with this. Shaking her head, she glanced around.

"Bruce?" she called. "It's Jean. We had an appointment?"

"Jean? Oh right, that was today..." Bruce Banner said absentmindedly as he appeared from behind a bulk of tech in one corner. "Sorry. I was recalibrating the particle manifold for the gamma array to- nope, okay, already lost you both. Got it." Bruce said but was talked over as he petered out.

"See, him I know. Captain Canuck. Ran into you last in Baltimore, fighting the second angriest seafood tower I've ever encountered. Thanks for the assist. But you-" Stark also appeared from the back, snapping his fingers before slapping the top of his fist. "But you. You I've only seen at a distance. Like a bit of a mystery." He said as he approached Jean. "Like there's something important about you I don't know and you need to tell me. Some fact. Maybe a truth."

"She's single and you aren't, Tony." Bruce said wryly.

"Oh, that."

Ah yes. Slap a blonde wig and some wings on him and it was like she was staring at her ex-boyfriend. Jean tilted her head. "What's important about me is I can make you think you're a 12 year-old-girl," she said with a smile.

"So will you be joining us for our appointment Mr. Stark, or were you just heading out?"

"See, I normally leave this kind of case for Bruce but- it seems like my expertise is needed. I mean, it's always needed. So, what's wrong again?" Tony said, pivoted easily.

"Thank you, Tony." Bruce said, giving Jean a look behind Tony's back.

Jean rubbed her forehead, then shook her head at Bruce. It was fine. Despite being...himself, Tony was also very good at technology. Perhaps this was a good thing. Maybe. Hopefully.

"Long story short...a demonic curse is messing with Garrison's...life force. It's out of balance, somehow. I was hoping there might be something outside of magic that could help reverse it. Like...science." Surely mysticism wasn't the end all, be all.

"He messed up his chi? Mis-aligned his chakras? Sounds more like a job for some hot yoga studio." Stark said dismissively. Fortunately, Kane had heard enough about Stark to have expected this. He turned to Banner instead.

"It all started over a decade ago with your buddy Thor. I caught his hammer when he was trying to kill me while under an Asgardian curse." That suddenly wiped the smirk off Tony's face. "Seems it infused with some kind of celestial Asgardian whose-its and cracked my connection to the natural order. Then I was part of a dimension break event. And then, months ago, I was infused with demonic energy, which, in the process of being flayed alive, also broke my natural connection to, well, the world. Call it chi, life energy, the goddamn Force if you want. But because of that, I'm slowly losing my powers - and there's already a noticeable loss. Once those go, sleep, food, water... they'll slowly stop helping me recover energy, until the last of it is gone and with it, me."

Kane had gotten very matter of fact about all of this over the months. Banner rubbed his chin. "Interesting. I've read too many SWORD reports to discount magic, although much of it is just science with different names. Jean, are there any physical effects you've been able to find so far? I'm assuming you ran down all avenues before contacting us."

"Medically? Yes," Jean said. "There's nothing to show for it. We have some magically oriented people on our side investigating but I wanted to make sure we were able to explore every option."

She let out a breath. "If I hadn't lived more than a few magical instances I'd think your way. And maybe some of it is just another word for science...But if that's so...I was hoping some of the most brilliant scientific minds I know might be able to help."

"So is it just you're slowly dying, I guess." Bruce said with a shrug. His bedside manner wasn't the best, but he took that Kane wasn't someone that needed a soft touch.

"No. Apparently, the universe is keeping me alive because if I die too soon, I mess up the natural order with my life energy. Woman with the mutant pheromone power to make my organs explode instead was like she spritzed me with Pine Sol. I nearly drowned a few months ago and was saved by a wolf over twenty-five hundred miles outside of its natural habitat. They call it a chaos aura." Kane said and suddenly both of the men's eyebrows shot up.

"Wait, so with a potential paradox-"

"There's a manipulation of chaos theory that says-"

"Wait, what?"

"The first law of thermodynamics." Bruce said, silencing Tony with a finger. "Energy is a constant. It can't be created or destroyed. Only transferred or transformed."

Jean held up a hand. "Guys. Stop. Rewind. So glad you're excited but we do not have multiple doctorates in this stuff. Please explain in simpler terms."

"So all energy in the world is finite. There is as much as it is. If Dudley Do Right here dies, he breaches that law. Which means he creates a paradox." Stark said. "That's where I know you from!" He snapped his fingers suddenly. "You used to date Worthington! We went to, like, a dozen parties together. That one on Martha's Vineyard when Lady Gaga violated that bunch of bananas-"

"Stop. Tony... so when you say the universe is trying to keep you alive, it's trying to avoid a potential quantum destabilizing event."

"Quantum destabilizing event...as in messing with time?" Jean said, ignoring Tony and his revelation.

"The space time continuum, yeah. So who knows what will happen in that event?" Banner said. "Even the universe doesn't want to find out."

"This sounds like someone is making decisions."

"No, this is actually normal scientific law, surprisingly. Here, let's get a scan."

"Yeah, hop on the Probulator and we'll see what is ticking in your poutine," Tony said, flipping his sunglasses back over his eyes.

"It's ah- it's not really called the Probulator," Bruce said quietly to Jean.

"Did he invent it or did you?" Jean said. "If the former, I am not entirely surprised it's called that."

Turning back to Tony, she folded her arms. "What is this supposed to measure?"

"Everything. It's a full spectrometer Bruce and I developed to study his green rage monster transition. See, Brucie converts energy to mass in his transformation, so it basically turns into both a gamma radiation sink as well as warping space-time to access the energy he needs. Which is so close to impossible that he could be his own field of study right now. Hulkology. Mm, you know what-" Tony touched the comm on his watch. "Trademark Hulkology. Anyway, so we..."

"Possibly might explain how this helps me." Kane said, almost ready to regret coming. Stark was exhausting and as nice as Banner was, he'd faced off against the Hulk before, and it was hard not to see that face on a creature that nearly beat him and Marie into paste.

"We'll take some scans and see if there's anything within the realm of what we can scan for which is irregular. If we can find something, maybe we can theorize a way to fix it." Banner said, turning back to the banks of screens. He tapped a few buttons and then looked back over his shoulder. "Just hold still. This won't take long."

The lights on the dias flickered for a second, and suddenly a dozen small drones dropped from above him, circling in a waving pattern, lasers running across his body. They rotated him for thirty seconds, humming and whirring before shooting back up into the housing. Kane blinked a couple of times.

"Was that it?"

"He refers to the most advanced organic scanning system on the planet as 'it'. God bless the common man. That was it and- ooh, you're in luck. You can skip that next prostate check. You're clean."

Jean tilted her head. "And what about the things we were scanning him for that were potentially abnormal? The 'common woman' is curious when the most advanced organic scanning system on the planet will live up to its name beyond something I can do with my finger."

"So you can do it with-"

"Tony, stop." Bruce said. "From a physics standpoint, there's nothing wrong with you. You inhabit the point in space and trade energy based on basic QED principles. Your gamma signature is all over the map, but gamma radiation is notoriously mutagenic, so that could be your current powers or something else."

Blinking, Jean let out a quiet scoff. "Okay, so have you scanned other mutants to compare it as a baseline or is this based off of a theory?" she said. She was trying to remain composed. It wasn't that she was mad at them, it was that it was sounding like science was an echo chamber, reflecting things back at them but not saying much. So it left her frustrated.

"We've modeled as many types of para-humans and mutants we've found." Bruce said to her, apologetically. "The only thing that isn't normal about Garrison Kane is his gamma signature. It... fluctuates. Now, that could be an element of this chaos aura. Or it could be tied to his original mutation. Gamma radiation by nature is metagenic... it reacts in unexpected ways which love to subvert the laws of physics."

He waved Kane off the platform and waved a hand at her. "Want to hop on? See what you look like under the scan?"

Jean fell silent a moment, carefully eying the machine. Finally, after a moment, she nodded. "I...Sure," she said. She was, admittedly, curious as to what the Phoenix would show up as...a giant energy bird? Would it break the machine? Having the Avengers being the one to do the scan was not lost on her, but she liked to think of it as a way to build relations and trust. They could use as many allies as they could get.

Bruce hit a few buttons and the drones dropped down and surrounded her just like Kane. After a few moments, they zipped back up and both men tapped the screen to draw up an image of her. Stark shifted and put her scan and Kane's side by side.

"Now, as you can tell, the prettier image doesn't have the erratic gamma signature. It's stable across the range we associate with the x-gene. Benton Frasor here is 100% an anomaly." Tony slapped Kane on the chest with the back of his hands. "We'll do some work. I like a challenge, but straight up, this is not a 'take two pills and a couple of days off work' cure here."

Admittedly a little surprised, Jean raised an eyebrow when the machine showed her as 'normal,' but said nothing. "What kind of work?" she said.

"We'll dig into the energy signature, see what kinds of variance we can find. Jean, trust me, we'll give it a thorough overview, I promise." Banner said. "But for now... well, I'll call you as soon as I find anything."

Jean allowed herself to feel somewhat hopeful. "Thank you," she said, giving a glance and a small nod to Tony as well. For all his bravado he was still one of the smartest men around.

Hopefully between the two of them they'd find something.