While Satoru stayed to discuss with Professor Xavier and Hank McCoy inside the medical lab along with a woman that just entered the room called Dr. Jean Grey, Piotr led Illyana, Wanda, and Rintrah out into the floor's quiet lobby to give them some space.
Illyana leaned stiffly on a wooden bench, still in a daze as she stared blankly at the floor.
Piotr sat right beside her, speaking in a low voice to her. He was talking about somethings but it was all a blur to her, she didn't seem to hear a single word he was saying.
Her mind was stuck in a loop, replaying the exact image of Wanda leaning over Satoru beneath that tree.
Wanda, who was sitting directly across from her, couldn't handle seeing her friend like this. So, after a moment of hesitation, she leaned forward, reached out and gently rested her palms over Illyana's hands.
"Illyana?" Wanda asked softly, her voice filled with a mix of genuine worry and deep anxiety. "Are you alright? Does your forehead hurt?"
Illyana flinched slightly at the touch. She pulled her hands back slowly, breaking the contact and gripping the black pendant around her neck instead.
She finally looked up, meeting Wanda's eyes with a expression that made the other woman flinch.
"I'm fine," Illyana said, her voice completely ice-cold. "My head doesn't hurt. I'm just thinking about Piotr's team."
Piotr looked between the two girls, sensing the unusually heavy atmosphere between them, though he completely misinterpreted the cause. "They will be fine, little sister. Plus, your master might be able to help us with whatever that was that caused the M-Pox."
Wanda bit her lower lip, pulling her hands back into her lap. She knew exactly why Illyana was freezing her out, but what was she to do? She just confessed what she truly felt, was that so wrong? If Illyana was going to be like this…
Wanda looked away from her, stood up and approached Rintrah and began talking with him about sorcery.
Piotr watched them go, then turned back to his sister, placing a massive, heavy hand on her shoulder. "Illyana, you look so out of it, do you want to rest? I can accompany you to the house."
Illyana didn't answer him. Her eyes stayed locked on Wanda's back. The coldness in her chest didn't fade.
Illyana was a blunt person with a highly pragmatic sense of self that was mainly caused by the abuse and psychological trauma she had gone through while she was trapped in the Dimension of Limbo.
She might be dense at times, but she has wit, and wit comes with solving things that the eye can see. She was slowly beginning to piece things together the more she stared at Wanda's back and her eyes slowly widened as it finally clicked.
What was she going to do with this revelation? Well, she certainly wouldn't just sit here and let this silence fester between her and Wanda. She needed an absolute answer.
Slowly, Illyana stood up, gently brushing Piotr's hand off her shoulder. She walked across the lobby.
Rintrah saw her approaching and immediately said something to her, but that too Illyana had muted down.
Her eyes were resting solely on Wanda, who turned around and met her gaze.
Without any hesitation, Illyana spoke, her voice dropping into a quiet, unwavering whisper that only the three of them could hear. "Do you love him?"
Wanda blinked, her heart hammering against her ribs. "What?"
"Gojo," Illyana said, her jaw tightening as she stepped closer into Wanda's space. "You kissed him. I saw you. And when I saw you two like that under the tree... it felt like something was ripping right out of my chest."
Wanda's face flushed, but she forced herself to stand her ground, her hand instinctively coming up to touch the warm crimson pendant around her neck. "Illyana, I—"
"I don't know what this feeling is," Illyana interrupted, her yellow eyes flashing with conflicting mix of anger and vulnerability. She reached down and gripped her own black Uru pendant, squeezing it until her knuckles turned snow-white. "I've never felt it before. But seeing you with him made me realize it. I think I love him too."
The confession hung heavily in the air between them. Wanda stared at her best friend, and Illyana stared back.
Poor Rintrah was in between them just standing there dumbly, not knowing what to do. Piotr who was watching from the same place he always was as he stared at the R'Vaalian.
Rintrah beckoned him with his eyes that said something like 'Come over here!'.
Piotr raised a brow, and thought. 'What does he want?'
He didn't approach, he just sat there pondering on what he meant. Rintrah frantically whizzed around his pupils at Wanda and Illyana, but… no matter what he does, Piotr didn't move from his place.
"So," Illyana said, her voice freezing over once more as she leveled a glare directly into Wanda's eyes. "What happens now?"
Before Wanda could form an answer, the automated double doors of the medical lab slid open. Satoru walked out into the lobby, his hands still shoved deep within his black robes.
Even without looking, he can sense the weird atmosphere of the lobby. 'Uh-oh…'
He stopped a few feet away from the entrance, then he turned around briskly. "I'll be back. I forgot something, aha-aha-hahaha."
'I don't want to be in anything with whatever that was.' Satoru's sweat dropped and the doors slid shut behind him.
…
[ Back at the Medical Lab ]
Satoru stood right back inside the medical lab, exhaling a quiet sigh of relief as the automated doors sealed out the suffocating wall of tension in the lobby.
He cleared his throat, clapping his hands together to force a casual rhythm back into his posture. "Right! Where did we leave off again?"
Hank McCoy turned around from a complex chemical analyzer, adjusting his glasses. He looked toward the closed double doors with a confused frown. "Aren't you going to bring your apprentices in here, Mr. Gojo? I thought you want them to hear this."
"Nah, they're... busy. Yup, they're very busy out there," Satoru waved a hand dismissively, his lopsided grin stretched a bit tight. "They're doing some very high-level teamwork exercises. Best not to disturb them. Let's just focus on the science stuff."
Jean Grey exchanged a brief, knowing look with Professor Xavier. As a telepath, she didn't need to read Satoru's highly shielded mind to feel the absolute tidal wave of awkward teenage angst radiating from the hallway. But seeing Satoru's desperate urge to stay in the lab, she opted to not talk about it.
"Very well," Professor Xavier said, guiding his hoverchair closer to a large monitor. "Hank was just showing us the molecular breakdown of the contaminant found within the fish oil capsules."
"It's entirely anomalous, Satoru," Hank explained, pointing a large blue finger at a structural model pulsing on the screen. "We've run it through every known chemical database on Earth. It has the property of a gaseous vapor, yet it was tightly bound into an oil compound. It didn't trigger any standard biological poison protocols because it acts on a sub-atomic level. It is completely engineered to force an immediate, erratic evolutionary shift upon contact with the mutant X-gene, which ultimately triggers the severe cellular inflammation we are calling M-Pox."
Satoru leaned in, his hidden Six Eyes flaring behind the dark silk of his blindfold as he analyzed the raw data on the monitor. He scanned the geometric shapes of the molecular strands, reading the exact residue of its energy.
It wasn't magic. It wasn't human bio-engineering. It was an incredibly ancient and pristine force of nature.
"Like I said before, I've never seen anything like this sad to say. It's embarrassing cause I thought I might be of help," Satoru murmured. "It's a completely foreign element."
"If it is an ancient or extraterrestrial catalyst, standard medicine won't be able to synthesize an accurate cure in time," Jean Grey noted, her brow furrowed in deep worry. "Our students are already suffering from the breakouts."
Satoru stood up straight, shoving his hands back into the deep pockets of his formal black robes. He reached up and tapped the Mind Stone brooch on his forehead to transmit the data here to someone who was in Kamar-Taj helping the other masters administering things of the compound.
"I'll tell someone I know to look into this," Satoru said, turning toward the corner of the lab and leaning on a metallic table. "He's an expert when it comes to sorting through ancient, dusty records. If this 'mist' has a trace on Earth, he'll find it."
"We appreciate that, Mr. Gojo," Jean said, nodding as she pulled up a secondary global transit map on the monitor. "In the meantime, the X-Men are preparing to deploy teams globally. We need to stop the production and distribution of these fish oil supplements immediately before the outbreak expands further."
Charles stepped closer to the screen, his expression tightening. "I don't think that would help much since it's already out there, Jean. Though stopping does narrow down the clues further, if we're going to look into it.
He turned to face Satoru, Jean, and Hank. "Regular humans who ingest these specific batches are undergoing a strange physical transformation. They aren't contracting M-Pox, but they are suddenly developing superhuman abilities."
"I think I've seen news reports like that on television," Satoru tilted his head, his interest piqued. "So, are they turning into mutants?"
"No," Charles answered gravely. "There's something that might be vital in all of this. And that's when I tried scanning a few of them telepathically from a distance. Their genomes have been rewritten, but they lack the X-gene entirely. Whatever this mist is, it is artificially unlocking dormant genetic potential in baseline humans while actively trying to purge ours."
Hank let out a heavy sigh, crossing his large arms. "Which means we're racing against a dual-front crisis. We have to secure the manufacturing plants and isolate the remaining pure compound to reverse-engineer a baseline treatment."
Satoru stood up straight, shoving his hands back into his pockets as a wide, brilliant grin flashed across his face. An absolute genius of an idea had just struck him — a perfect blueprint to solve two massive problems at the exact same time.
"Hey, I have a fantastic idea," Satoru said as Charles, Jean and Hank turned their heads to look at him. "How about I send my apprentices to help your team out with the search? They're very useful with our sorcery, so they'll be an immense help with the heavy lifting and tracking down the warehouses."
Jean Grey blinked, raising an eyebrow at his sudden, intense enthusiasm. "Are you sure? You just said outside they were incredibly busy with... high-level teamwork exercises."
"Oh, they'll finish those up real quick once I tell them there's a field trip involved!" Satoru grinned, his sweat dropping internally. If he packed Wanda, Illyana, and Rintrah into a jet with the X-Men and sent them halfway across the country, they would be way too busy dodging bad guys to corner him for relationship answers. It was the ultimate tactical retreat. "Trust me, they love a good mission. I'll just go out there, wrap up their little 'group discussion,' and hand them right over to you guys."
The three X-Men looked at each other then nodded.
"If you say so, Mr. Gojo."
...
[ Author's Notes ]: Stone me?
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