[A/N]: Here's your weekly regular chapter. Let's set the goal at 250 Power Stones and unlock two bonus chapters - comment, share, and you know the drill đâš
As for the second bonus chapter from last night... It's coming, alright? Just give me a bit. Man, damn đ”âđ«âïž
The words still echoed in Jay's mind.
"Be careful and come back safe. Franklin's going to need his godfather."
Jay blinked. His mouth opened to respond, but the teleportation had already completed. Blue energy faded around him as he materialized atop the Chrysler Building.
"I... what?"
Sue and Reed couldn't hear him. He was alone.
Godfather.
They wanted him to be Franklin's godfather.
A small smile touched his lips. Warmth spread through his chest.
The warmth lasted three seconds before pain hit his skull.
Jay staggered. His hand shot out, grabbed the spire. His knees buckled. The metal groaned under his grip.
"What the hell..."
His danger sense screamed. But the warning came from inside.
Jay's healing factor kicked in. Blood vessels repaired. Neurons rerouted. But the damage came faster. His nose bled. Ears followed. Warmth trickled down his neck.
"No. Not now. Not..."
Jay closed his eyes. His consciousness dove into his mental plane.
The mindscape was breaking.
Cracks spread across the sky. Fractures through the foundation where his powers manifested. Each crack pulsed. Pain translated to his real body.
"No. No no no no..."
Jay tried to move toward the cracks, but his mental avatar stumbled and fell. Every movement sent lightning through his consciousness.
"Come on. Come ON!" He pushed himself up. His mental form flickered at the edges. "I did not survive Sinister just to die from a literal newborn's power!"
He forced himself to look deeper.
There it was.
A silhouette of a young boy, no more than an infant really, suspended in the center. Rainbow light cascaded from the figure in waves. Galaxies formed and collapsed around him. Stars ignited and died in seconds.
Franklin Richards' power.
The reality manipulation he'd taken and locked away.
Except it wasn't locked anymore.
His original Power Theft manifested nearby. Still resembling Jay himself, all grey with ocean-blue eyes and that tattered red cape. The manifestation strained. Veins of light pulsed across its form as it tried to enforce control.
But it was failing.
The power was too vast. Too primal.
Jay's Adaptive Power perk activated automatically. Golden overlay spread across the manifestation, trying to coerce Franklin's abilities. To reshape them to fit Jay's physiology.
The golden light wrapped around the rainbow, attempting to compress it.
Jay watched his perk try every permutation. The reality-warping power didn't even notice.
"Shit. Shit shit SHIT!"
Jay's physical body convulsed atop the Chrysler Building. Blood trickled from his body. His healing factor worked overtime, but the damage kept coming faster than he could heal.
He couldn't give it back.
The thought crashed through him. He couldn't just return this power to Franklin. Sue and Reed's faces flashed through his mind. Their hope. Their relief. Their trust.
'You gave him the gift of childhood,' Sue's words echoed.
If he gave it back now, after everything, after promising them their son would be safe...
He couldn't do it.
But he also couldn't pass it to something else. A random animal, an insect, anything. God knew what would happen if something without proper consciousness suddenly had the power to reshape reality.
"Options," Jay gasped. "What are my goddamn options?"
Bear it? How? His body was failing. Dying and regenerating again and again.
Merge it? With what? He scrolled through his available powers mentally. Duality? Too limited. Technomorphing? Laughable. Healing aura? Not even in the same category.
He could sacrifice some powers. Dump them into his power theft to give it more weight. Material absorption from Carl Creel would help. Pile on enough powers, and maybe he could reinforce the containment enough to survive.
But it would be a waste. Those powers, gone forever, just to barely maintain the status quo. And for how long? Days? Weeks?
Jay raised a trembling hand, reaching for the manifestation of Creel's material absorption.
Then something moved inside him.
Not in his mindscape. Somewhere deeper. Cellular level. Something that had been dormant suddenly awakened.
The pain didn't disappear, but it changed. Became bearable instead of apocalyptic.
"What..."
Jay searched deeper, past the manifestations of his powers, into the fundamental code of what he'd become.
And found Darwin's reactive adaptation.
Or what used to be Darwin's reactive adaptation.
The power had merged with his Adaptive Power perk weeks ago. Dissolved into his baseline existence. Woven into every cell. He'd checked it then, found nothing different, and promptly forgotten about it.
But it hadn't been dormant.
It had been preparing.
His cells weren't just healing and dying anymore. They were evolving. Neurons restructured. New pathways formed. His DNA unraveled and rewrote itself.
Even his conceptual structure was shifting. The mental plane itself grew new architecture. Foundations that could bear impossible weight.
The process took thirty seconds in the real world. But in his mental plane, Jay experienced every microsecond. Every cell division. Every synapse rewiring.
It should have been agony.
Instead, it felt right. Like his body had been waiting for exactly this challenge.
The light radiating from Franklin's power began to dim. Contained. Jay's power theft, reinforced by the adaptive changes, established multiple locks.
It was still strenuous. Under constant pressure. But it wasn't killing him anymore.
Jay's consciousness rose from his mental plane slowly, carefully.
First came awareness of his body. The weight. The ache in his muscles. The taste of copper in his mouth.
Then his senses returned one by one. The wind against his face. The sound of distant explosions. The smell of smoke and ozone.
His eyes opened.
He was on his hands and knees atop the Chrysler Building. Gasping. Covered in sweat and blood. Dark patches stained his shirt. His healing factor worked overtime, cleaning up the damage that remained.
But he was alive.
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