WHOA, INDEED.

“Laboratory analysis. This wad’s been in my pocket long enough to be the missing link and you’re passing it up without so much as a cursory inspection.” Her mouth quirked up in a grin, then faded as Jubilee had a rather shattering afterthought. “That missing link… That’s still a thing, right?” She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, legs still straight out on the coffee table, and waited for an answer from the best single smartest person she knew. Way smarter than Professor X. Unlike the Professor, for all his wonder and greatness, the Doc could understand people, too. 

Jubilee sat up and stretched her arms high. That was a tougher question than it seemed. “We’re good,” she said, finally, with a nod. “It’s been a fucking rollercoaster. You know, mutant with a baby coming through! But we’re really, really good. Especially now that we’re here. I can tell.” She snapped and a firework of pink and purple glittered up towards the ceiling. “With you and Laura, and that Martian chick with the room service, things are looking up.”

“I’d like you to meet him, you know.” Jubilee beamed. “Right now if he weren’t sleeping. I’ve never been into the whole ‘Ohana means family’ bullshit, but you’re pretty much the closest we’ve got. You are Laura now that Logan is…” She shook her head free of the thought. “If anything were to happen to me, I’d want to know that Shogo had a place. Had people. He’s not one of us, physiotomically, but he’s mine. You’re just gonna love the fuck out of him, Doc.”

There was a sleepy baby huff from the monitor. Jubilee leaned in for a few seconds, then leaned back. “He’s playing us.” She cracked her knuckles, absolutely crackling with lights at the thought of her baby. “Tricky little menace. What have you been up to? How have things been on the slightly less sleep deprived side of things?” She pulled her legs in. “God fucking damn, Hank, you’d better be less deprived than me. Otherwise things are about to go to shiiiit.”

Ah, the missing link. Hank simply waggled a hand, expressing, as succinctly as he could, the questionable state of the concept. The X-Men, on the whole, spent fewer course hours on the history of human evolution than the present state of it. As manifested in the classroom, especially. Those lessons did have to take priority. 

Ears perked to the soft sounds of that baby monitor - he couldn’t help it - Hank let Jubilee have herself a good think. And grinned, satisfied, when the answer arrived. That burst of jubilation did a great deal to convince him, actually. The link between state of mind and mutant manifestation wasn’t missing at all, and Jubilee, she was clearly shining bright. As he’d hope. Even if he couldn’t necessarily agree that their situation was, on the whole, looking especially up... the more of them there were, together again, the better. So far as he was concerned. A bit codependent, perhaps. But just a bit. And functionally. He’d like to think so, at least. 

“Oh, obviously. On all counts.” Hank’s smile only grew, warm and gentle and completely, absolutely sure Jubilee was right about that. Maybe he couldn’t, wouldn’t, promise that nothing was going to happen to her. But he could promise this much: that he, personally - a sucker for babies, since he’d sat them around Dunfee to help pay the bills - would love this child she’d decided would be hers. And, that Shogo could count on everything the X-Men had to offer: a place, people. What they’d been - imperfectly, yes, but what home, what family, was perfect, or could be, under their circumstances, as hard as they’d tried - to each other, and every new generation that came through the Mansion’s doors. 

He glanced to the baby monitor as Jubilee did, then, as she relaxed, added: “Ah. I suppose I’ll manage to wait a little longer.” Couldn’t cost little Shogo a good night’s sleep. On that subject... Hank waffled. “I suspect so. Though - well, you’ll see. Probably soon.” Probably, yes; he’d left Amarilis in one of her post-meal naps, sprawled across a bookshelf back in his room. This crepuscular period they were in was one of her times, though. She’d lurch awake soon enough, rip into the scratching tree he’d built for her, then, loudly, urgently, come looking for him. A predictable pattern. Comforting, at this point. “But, yes, yes, I’ve been well. And all over,” he sighed, frankly, cracking his neck. “There’s so much to get done. Everywhere! You’ll love this, though: you’re just in time to test run our new and improved Danger Room, here. If that’s not too terribly nostalgic.” The smirkish curl to his smile allowed for the fact that not every X remembered the Room so fondly as he did, but. He had said new and improved for a reason.

Hank’s voice was soothing in its roll, ever-polite in inflection but smooth-rolling in tone; Diana shifted her weight as she listened, a hip cocking and a hand coming up to curl against her chin in thought. She sought comfort from his estimation, and yet—she’d seen the limitations on human firsthand, many a time. What the inhabitants of Man’s World lacked in physical strength and durability, they more than made up for in ingenuity. 

Just because one genius was telling Diana that something wasn’t feasible as far as he could see, that a project might not be worth pursuing, did not mean that another would not see it as a challenge. Or that another would care about the risk, the danger.

Still. That was a concern for another day, and Diana had learned long ago to compartmentalize crises in order of immediacy. In this moment, Diana would trust Hank’s judgement. 

“Well. In the face of the unknown, the possibility of at least eliminating this option is a comfort,” she replied, eyeing the schematics for another moment before turning her dark eyes back to her companion. “Do you have imaginings, my friend? Over what sorts of further horrors this scrap of metal may have inspired?”

Thrumming, needfully, Ama ran her whiskered snout across the side of that hand she’d been holding; one side, then the other, with soft, whistling snuffles. Before she got to play-biting at his fingertips, as if to insist she was alright. Hank clicked his tongue, frowning, but gently. Couldn’t let her get used to making chew-toys of whoever and whatever she liked. She gave up the game, begrudgingly, and pinned his arm to the counter instead. There. Trapped. Nothing to do but scratch her neck and consider Diana’s questions. He could manage.  

“I do, unfortunately.” Hank had followed Wonder Woman’s pondering look towards that display, still rotating silently, exploding and assembling. “And, if I’m correct, then this, here, is less an inspiration, a truly new beginning, than an attempt to realize a...” his nose wrinkled at the word that came to mind. He’d heard enough of legacies, back on Genosha. “An inheritance, perhaps. How familiar are you with the Trask Conglomerate? And, more particularly - with the Sentinel Project?” 

.

Hank’s words distracted Diana momentarily from his little companion’s sweetness, that soft-furred head under the brush of her fingertips. She blinked, but smiled, when Hank said he’d tested the machine already, shaking his apology off—with a quick smile, even, at the not-apology. Diana was sure that the siding would be sufficiently replaced. 

Ama’s reaction, however, made the amazon’s attentive expression furrow into a frown. As she removed her hand, respectfully, in the face of the little creature’s distress, the picture she painted of the device’s capabilities. 

“I’m sorry to have distressed you,” Diana said as Amarilis took her comfort from the familiarity of Hank’s closeness, curling her hands around her tea. Even as she pondered what she had learned, from a firsthand perspective. Hank’s clinical observations, brought to life most vividly. (While he stopped shining, and went cold…) “But I am very grateful to you for sharing what you’ve seen. You’ve given me much to think on.” 

Diana quieted for a moment of contemplation, as she turned her attention back to Hank. “How much more work do you think would have to be put in, for the device to be feasibly usable? Without risk of exposure.” She met his eyes, mouth curving in thought. “An endeavor the makers would consider worth pursuing?” 

Ama was acquiring quite the grip, as she recovered; well, she came by that honestly. Hank left his hand clutched tight in hers. She needed it more, at the moment. Diana’s kindness did get a thankful glance, a soft-edged smile - and, from Ama, a crooning that he’d come to take for comfort, for settling in, bearing up. It was difficult, of course, to be terribly specific. Wonder Woman could understand Amarilis, her mind, utterly unique as it was. He could only parse. And try not to project. For his own sake, as much as Ama’s. Maybe more so. 

“Too much. I think.” That’s what she’d asked for, after all; his assessment. He’d tuned to attention, refocused. “To entirely mitigate that risk, or even acceptably reduce it, to survivable levels - it’s... not an issue of bad design, so much as insurmountable limitations. And those, for our better, and their worse, are human.” Ironic, really. Some might find it funny; Hank wouldn’t begrudge them the dry, dark laugh, but. He’d never quite been able to join in. “The shielding suit was in poor repair, but even at its best, it would have been cumbersome, inhospitable, and, still, largely ineffective. More effective protection might be possible, but not without imposing untenable burdens on the wearer: heat, weight, restriction of movement, musculoskeletal strain and injury. It’s...” not impossible, because precious little was, and he’d learned through bitter and bizarre experience to avoid presuming such an absolute, “an exercise in futility, a bad investment. So, no - no, I suspect this particular device exists only as a relic, really. A passion project, for a developer who isn’t prepared to abandon their work. Foisted onto an unknowing grunt, for further field-testing.” The mangled man in their brig, floors down, wouldn’t be there for long. Frankly, Hank was glad of that - and the sentiment wasn’t entirely a matter of mercy, he knew. 

Ama kneaded at the muscle of his palm, and he cracked his neck, turning from where he’d been staring, wearily, at those projected schematics. “I think, the larger forces, backing all this - they learned what they could, realized their limits, and moved on. To what, we can only imagine.” Though history certainly did present a host of hideous possibilities...

Respectful, Scott dropped to Amarilis’s level and extended a hand for her to inspect should she so desire. If Hank was so reverent of the creature, there was likely more to her than a simple feline nature. Hank lacked the kind of attachments Remy seemed to prefer. 

“Seems like you’ve been having a lot of fun without me,” Scott said. Fun was relative, objective, but Hank would understand what Scott meant. “Logan mentioned sentinels in Nevada, yes. As if we don’t have enough to contend with after the Accords and with the ISA.” Scott still hadn’t read the records and reports. Hearing it from Hank might elucidate things more efficiently. Scott was content to ask it. As was his nature, he was direct and to the point. There was never time for pleasantry and wasted words anymore. “I’ll have to hear more about that when you’re ready.” He wouldn’t push against Hank’s boundaries, trusting his dear friend would come to him with the prudent information when it was time to disclose it and when it was appropriate to do so. Hank’s measure of the world around him was unparalleled for a person lacking in cosmic, telepathic, or reality powers. It was simply his intuition, but it was enough to keep the X-Men aware and for gaps to be filled which would otherwise go unnoticed.

Stripping off his button down, Scott folded it and carefully placed it on what he took to be Hank’s work table. He didn’t mind if the white tank top he wore beneath was soiled with whatever the Blackbird left behind, but he was loath to try to seek out the laundry room unassisted again. Surely Bucky Barnes wouldn’t always be around to guide him. “Let me in there,” he said to Hank, moving to join him as he took in the glorious mechanisms of a ship they’d built and rebuilt together more times than could be counted. “And yes. Start from the beginning, or wherever you believe is the best place.”

Scott. She’d been taught that name, too. Her claws had clicked to the concrete as she unwound her way down the Blackbird, slinking closer, closer, as they spoke. Near enough to meet Scotty. She craned her neck, sniffing. Watching, the light, especially - the way the light moved, across his glasses. How it hummed, at the very edge of her hearing. There was a comfort to the tone. Ama tapped at his hand, then, more confidently, grabbed at his thumb, her opposable paw-pads gripping at him. Only for a moment, before she swirled back to press against Hank’s shins.

He met her with a behind-the-ear scratch. Strangers were getting easier. Not that Scott entirely counted. Hank straightened up, rolling his shoulders with a scoff of a laugh. Fun. For a given definition, yes. “Sentinel-adjacent technology,” he corrected, prepared to be particular. “I’ll show you what we brought back. But only after.” Did the Blackbird demand Scott’s attention more urgently, at this point? Not really. Did Scott deserve the familiar comfort of purposeful work, on their jet? Before taking in those troubling signs? Absolutely. They both did. Nothing like a little tinkering to cleanse the palate, he’d always found. A job for between jobs. 

“Well.” Hank turned with his captain to where he’d set the uninstalled turbofans, their blades gleaming, darkly iridescent. “About Nevada. Let’s - let’s start with the where. The site certainly did host some of Sinister’s work. For -” he bent to take the ball Ama had brought back, ready to play again, and winged it down the hangar for her to scamper after. “Three to four years, by my estimate. However: the bunker wasn’t his.” Nathaniel Essex liked his lairs bespoke, and had the means. His undertakings did demand certain unique considerations, too - they’d refit, in that underground lab. To Sinister’s specifications, based on comparisons he’d made to the Institute’s files. “His allies were bureaucratic, in their management. Not the... inspired individuals or contained thinktanks he tends to prefer.” Essex wasn’t fond of collaboration, historically; never like this. Only made the evidence all the more unsettling. “Quicker to abandon and adjust development. Ruthlessly organized, and expendable. Less interested, it seems, in the fruits of his work - as projects, in and of themselves - than in observing those results. As live, in-house demonstrations, I imagine, of metahuman abilities they hoped to find some means of mimicking. Without biochemical intervention. Or fielding any cloned operatives.” Smacked of anti-mutant bigotry, extreme enough to resist the hypocritical temptation to fight with fire, to become, or put to use, that which they despised. 

And no, he wouldn’t call that device locked down in his lab any more than mere mimicry. A facsimile, incomparable to the original. Even if it were, of course, still horrendously dangerous. “They didn’t succeed especially well, for all that,” Hank continued, leaning around the back of the fan with a hammer and an aluminum drift, “but less for any glaring flaw in their efforts, or materials, than the frailty of the human element. Which,” he paused, after a - well, the only tap he needed, it seemed. He hadn’t meant to strike the blade quite so hard, but. There. The first of the pieces they had to replace was thoroughly loosened, slid half-way out of the fir-tree serration holding it in place. He’d winced; that ping had sounded an awful lot like the lock pin shearing right in two. Ladilla. On to the rest, with a lighter touch. “Which, combined with their apparently exceptional resources, lends sense to the otherwise unlikely step of attempting to, yes - make the Sentinel Program a reality.” 

..

Bobby chuckled, ditched the bag of treats and approached one of his oldest friends, arms outstretched as he did. “You’re so welcome, old man.” Despite being the same age, Bobby still liked to tease any way. He wrapped his arms around Hank and gave him a fond squeeze. “It’s been far too long.” Chuckling, Bobby gave him once last hard squeeze before stepping out of their embrace. 

“Nothing to report at all actually. We’ve just been keeping an eye on any movement up there. Did you know that Superman returned to the fortress a few weeks ago? That was probably the most exciting thing we saw. But never mind me, what about you? What have you been working on?” 

Good grief, as coach used to say. They were old. How unthinkable that’d been, back when. Too far off, too nebulous, too - unlikely. They’d made it, though. Through all kinds of hell and back. Yes, it’d been far too long. “It has. But.” Hank crushed Bobby in a little, and clapped his back, solidly, as they parted. “Here we are. Still standing.” 

More or less. He could use a sit, actually; his back. With a tilt and a crunch, Hank twisted something out of his lumbar and set his palms behind him, on the countertop, to hop himself up and perch on the edge. Lightly. Like he’d learned, long before the Mansion, always walking softly. “So, you’re prepared to regale me with notes from the local reindeer herds? I’m sure the migration was majestic.” He was. Really. “I’m afraid I don’t know much of anything about Superman, these days. Besides that he’s in the vicinity. Not the castle, to be clear.” Specificity was needed; it’d be easy to presume, given the circumstances. 

Donna made a quiet sound under her breath, a short acknowledgement regarding Roberto, as she perched on the cleared lab chair gratefully. She jotted it down next to her notes from the debrief before returning her attention to Hank and the new arrival. His request wasn’t one she had expected but it was hardly a taxing one. So Donna smiled warmly, indulgently so, and nodded her head. “I’d be more than happy to do it or to pass your request onto Diana. Whatever you think would be best for her.”

And then Hank continued to speak and Donna shook her head. “Not at all. I’m more than happy to try now - like I say, I have plenty of time before I’m due to find Roberto anyway,” she said. “Is there a way you think would be best to do so? I will do my best to be very gentle with her.”

What would be best for her. Hank weighed that, brow furrowed. She deserved to be known, to have that dignity. And if she’d never had a name of her own, if she couldn’t choose one herself, then he could, he’d name her, but - that seemed such an immense responsibility. Perhaps because he’d accepted more names than he’d picked, and it was habit that’d made them his, and - he’d want better, for her. The best, yes. Whatever that meant, for whatever she’d be. 

They’d find out. Day by day. Her purr, her easy-for-now heartbeat, rolled across the back of his neck as she slumped into one of her usual spots, draped and ready to doze. “Thank you. Yes - now. Now’s alright.” Hank sighed, glad and worn, and worried, but less. She'd already proven to be so very strong, after all. “There was a boy she knew, in that place. They escaped together. Survived the desert, for a while. He’s the only one, I imagine, who might’ve called her anything... meaningful.” Not a number, a code, something as empty and cruel as those cells. 

That poor boy. He’d had meaning, to her. Enough to risk sneaking back into the bunker she’d barely survived, over and over, just to sit with him. The memory of him, even. 

With an ache gathering high and heavy in his chest, Hank caught the sweep of his shadow’s tail, letting it grip around his knuckles and pulling, just a little. She creaked, curiously, and followed the point of his finger to Donna’s sweet face, those warmly brown eyes, so steady and serene. “She understands that he’s gone. She should know he wasn’t left there. Berto brought him out, and showed him the sun, and - made sure nobody could take anything from him, ever again.” The way Sinister’s people would have, constantly sampling, stealing biopsies and blood, pieces of him, testing, testing, testing. To see if they’d met the objectives of Nathaniel Essex. Hank wavered, furious and sore, swallowing it. “Tell her that, please. And see if they had names, for each other?” Her friend deserved one, too. Oh, they’d both deserved so much more. So, so much more than Sinister had ever imagined... 

Diana’s careful concentration was only interrupted by the chirp from her new friend, drawing her eyes away from Hank’s diagram. She couldn’t help a smile as the sweet little creature accepted her outstretched hand, turning it to run her hand gently over Ama’s soft head. “It’s lovely to meet you, Amarilis,” Diana said quietly, letting the magic of Demeter’s gift weave through her voice. Before looking back to Hank as he continued, her smile fading. A small furrow appeared between her brows as she considered, nodding slowly. 

“Do you have ideas as to what the alterations were meant to achieve?” Diana asked, head tilting. “I presume you haven’t tested the device. Do you have ideas as to how functional it is, currently? And how viable the alterations are for mass production?” She turned her eyes back to their small indigo companion, tilting her head. “Do you have any thoughts on the matter, little one?”

It was fascinating, how it worked, that - magic, he supposed, that Diana had. Ama certainly seemed to think so; her head took a tilt, and those odd ears  flicked forward, attention absorbed, entirely, as Wonder Woman spoke. (Diana, this was Diana, and she was important to him. Ama had heard it, when he told her that new name - like he’d told her Ama, Amarilis, not long ago. Trilling through a few high, bright notes, she decided Diana would be important to her, too.)

What they were meant for. Nothing that’d come out of that desert presented a pleasant answer to such a question. “Mitigating the user’s exposure seems to have been the driving concern. To ultraviolet radiation, that is. All efforts appear to have been colossally insufficient.” Hank sighed, a frown of his own gathering as he thought of that hateful man in the brig - dying, not-quite-slowly, of his employer’s ignorance and his own. He blinked up as Diana continued, refocused. “I have, in fact. I hope that wasn’t - presumptuous?” Perhaps he had, indeed, presumed; since he was fifteen, he’d been more or less loose in laboratories. But the Professor, of course, had his ways of keeping tabs. Wonder Woman and Captain America, they might require more direct communication. "With all due precautions, I assure. I’ll replace that siding. Today.” 

The ballistics range had, it seemed, been prepared for conventional flamethrowers. Less so Sunspot, or some variation on Berto’s theme, at least. 

“While thoroughly unsafe for any... average user, the design is functional, yes. And could be reproduced. The raw materials are no obstacle. The labour - this one was handmade, but automated assembly would be well within the means of...” Hank slowed, trailing off the obvious fact that so very many of their nemeses could bankroll such a thing. Towards where Ama had swiveled to stare at the matter. Not happily, clenching inward and bristling, tail to whiskers, as she coughed out a low growl. (She’d been asked, though. She understood she’d been asked. And she wanted to help. But all she had in answer was a mournful keen, her snout wrinkling as before came back to her: the hot-metal, scorched-dust and singed-flesh stink of the bunker, smoldering while her friend, the boy who brought the sun - while he stopped shining, and went cold.) With a tight twist of her still-bony body, Amarilis turned away under Diana’s palm, sat, and reached both sharp paws for Hank as he joined them; he’d circled the table quick, well-familiar with that particular prickle, the pained set of her jaw. "Here, here,” he smiled, softly, as Ama helped herself to the hand she’d asked to hold, her clawed almost-fingers curling around his. Just clinging, for a moment. To here.