[A/N]: Alright guys, the next goal is 250 Power Stones for the next bonus chapter 💎🔥
You know how it goes: vote, share the fic, and drop your thoughts in the comments 💬
The laboratory fell silent except for their ragged breathing.
Jay stood over Sinister's liquefied remains, his hands still glowing faintly red. The decay aura pulsed once more before he forced it back down, watching the malevolent crimson fade.
But it didn't disappear completely.
The red wouldn't leave. Jay focused harder, channeling his Duality power in reverse, trying to invert what he'd done to Tommy's healing gift. The yin-yang symbol in his mindscape spun.
"Come on," he muttered. Sweat beaded on his forehead. "Come on."
Slowly, painfully, the red began to fade. The green grew brighter, purer.
Then he noticed the Darwin-chimeras.
All four remaining duplicates had stopped moving. Frozen mid-lunge, arms extended toward where Domino had been fighting. The automated defenses continued firing at them, turrets whirring and plasma cannons charging. The chimeras' skin rippled, adapting to each new threat. Fire-resistant tissue sprouted where flames had touched. Ice-proof scales formed where cryogenic spray had landed.
But they didn't attack. Didn't move. Didn't even breathe in sync anymore.
The puppets had lost their strings.
"Jay!" Domino's voice cut through his observation. "A little help here!"
He turned.
She was leaning against a shattered surgical table, one hand pressed to her ribs. Blood seeped between her fingers. Her left arm hung at an odd angle. A gash across her forehead painted half her face red.
But she was alive. Her luck had kept the fatal blows from landing.
"Jay, what's taking so long?" She tried for sarcasm but it came out half-gasped. "Heal me already. I'm not used to being this banged up in a battle of all places."
Jay first used his Technomorphing to stop all security attacks.
Then he crossed the laboratory. Each step felt heavier than the last. His hands glowed green as he knelt beside her, Tommy's healing aura responding to his will.
Then he stopped. His hands hovered over her broken ribs.
"I'm sorry, Dom."
"What?"
"I can't always be there to fix you." The words came out quiet. "Every fight, every time you get hurt, I just heal you. You've gotten comfortable with it."
Domino stared at him. Blood dripped from her forehead into her eye, but she blinked it away. "Are you serious right now?"
"You've gotten reckless."
"I have luck. Recklessness is kind of my thing."
"And what happens when I'm not there?" Jay's voice cracked. "What happens when you're alone and bleeding out because you assumed I'd save you? Because you've forgotten how to survive without me as your safety net?"
The silence between them was heavy. Domino's jaw worked like she wanted to say something.
But the words wouldn't come.
Instead, her eyes went hard. "So what? you're teaching me a lesson? While I'm bleeding?"
"I'm teaching you survival." He picked her up, ignoring her grunt of pain. "And I'm giving you something better than dependence on my healing."
"Fuck you," she said, but there was no heat in it.
Just exhaustion and pain.
"Yeah. Probably deserve it."
He carried her across the laboratory to where Cyclops-Wolverine's body lay. The chimera's head had been slowly regenerating, the healing factor working to repair catastrophic brain damage.
Slowly.
Too slowly.
Jay set Domino down and placed his hand on the chimera's chest. His power theft activated.
The process was different this time. More deliberate. He could feel the chimera's abilities like layers of sedimentary rock. The optic blasts that channeled kinetic energy through specialized cells behind the eyes. The bone claws that extended through channels in the forearms. The feral instincts that overrode all reason.
And underneath it all, the healing factor. The constant cellular regeneration that made Wolverine nearly immortal.
Jay began dissecting the power structure in his mind. Separating components. Isolating the healing factor from everything else. It was like untangling a knot made of living tissue.
Three minutes passed.
"What are you doing?" Domino asked. Her voice had gotten weaker.
"Surgery." Jay didn't open his eyes. His consciousness was deep in the genetic structure, carefully removing the optic blast genetics, excising the bone claw formations and feral instincts, leaving only the pure healing factor behind. "This is why I couldn't just steal their complicated powers mid-fight. Why Sinister knew I'd be limited and planned a barrage of nonstop attacks with chimeras made of intertwining complex genes."
Another five minutes passed. Jay's head started pounding.
"Jay?" Domino's voice was distant.
"Almost there."
Ten minutes total. That's how long it took. The complexity was staggering. Each power wasn't just grafted on. It was woven through the chimera's entire genetic structure.
Finally, Jay extracted a glowing thread of pure healing factor. Not the optic blasts. Not the claws. Not the ferality.
Just the regenerative ability that made Wolverine legendary.
He transferred it to Domino. Carefully. Deliberately.
The effect was immediate and violent.
Her wounds began closing, but not cleanly. The broken ribs realigned with audible cracks that made her scream. The dislocated shoulder popped back into place with a wet grinding sound. The gash on her forehead sealed shut, but she could feel it happening. Feel her skin knitting together cell by cell.
"Fuck! Fuck, that hurts!" Domino clutched at her ribs, feeling bones shift under her fingers. "You didn't mention it would hurt!"
"Wolverine's used to it," Jay said, exhausted. "You're not. Your nervous system is registering the accelerated healing as trauma."
The pain faded after a few minutes. Domino watched her arm straighten, the bruises disappearing like someone was erasing them. The sensation was foreign and wrong but welcome.
"This feels... weird." She flexed her fingers. Tested her ribs.
No pain. Just the memory of pain.
"How long did that take?"
"About three minutes for major injuries. Minor cuts and bruises will take thirty seconds to a minute."
"I dissected a major chunk of the power to keep it pure", Jay continued. "I'm sorry Dom, but getting your healing to Wolverine-level regeneration will take months. Maybe years. Your body needs to adapt to the mutation and let it develop naturally."
Behind them, the Cyclops-Wolverine chimera's breathing stopped. Its healing factor had been the only thing keeping it alive after decapitation.
Without it, biology caught up.
Domino flexed her newly-healed arm, watching the last traces of bruising fade. Then she grinned. "Are you kidding me? This is a godsend." She stood up, testing her ribs.
No pain.
"Not to mention, with my luck, I'll rarely get hurt if ever. This is just insurance."
The grin faded when she looked at Jay's face. He was staring at the dead chimera.
"So what now?" she asked quietly. "Any better mood now that you've dealt with Sinister?"
Jay shook his head. "He was a clone."
"What?"
"When I killed him, I checked his genetic markers while I was using the decay aura." Jay's hands clenched. "Telltale signs of cloning, not subtle at all. It was as if Sinister was mocking me for missing the real one. Not to mention he himself stated it during his fucking monologue."
Domino processed this. All that effort. All that brutality.
And they'd only killed a copy.
"Fuck," she said. Then louder. "Fuck!"
She kicked a piece of debris. "We went through all this. You went through all this. And it was just a goddamn clone?"
"Yeah."
"That's bullshit. That's complete bullshit."
"I know." He continued, "But we'll find the real one. All of them. However many clones he has. We'll find them."
"Yeah." She said. "We will. But right now, you need to breathe."
They stood there for a moment, surrounded by corpses and ruined equipment.
[A/N]: Support my work and get early access to 45+ chapters, exclusive content, and bonus material at my P@treon - Max_Striker.
If you wanna hang out, join my Discord server- https://discord.gg/HrsdTeH7