[A/N]: Alright guys, the next goal is 250 Power Stones for the next bonus chapter šš„
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The cool mist from the cascading water felt like a blessing after the sterile hell of Sinister's lab.
Jay made it three steps before his knees gave out. He caught himself on the couch, then collapsed onto it, head in his hands.
Blood stained his clothes. Sinister's liquefied remains. The Darwin-chimera's dissolved flesh. His own blood. The smell of copper and antiseptic clung to him.
Domino watched him, her own exhaustion pulling at her. But something about the way Jay held himself kept her upright.
She'd seen him kill before. Hell, she'd watched him execute Doom on live television.
This was different.
She sat down beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched.
"You want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
"Too bad." She leaned against him. "What was with that red aura? And since when can you kill someone like that?"
Jay was quiet for a long time.
Then he sighed.
"I never told you, did I?"
"Told me what?"
His hands flexed. For a moment, a faint green glow flickered across his palms before dying out. "When I first came to this world, the very first power I got was from a kid named Tommy. His mutation was killing him, burning through his body faster than it could sustain. Luckily, I was there to treat him. Took his power and watched him become healthy for the first time in his life."
Domino waited.
"I joined the medical field to serve people. To make them healthy. But back in my old world, I never really could. Money, healthcare, dozens of other barriers got in the way of basic treatment. Here, though?" His voice cracked slightly. "First day in this universe, I saved a kid. And his power, my first power, was this healing aura."
He raised his hand. Green light glowed dimly.
"I thought it was a sign from whatever brought me here."
He lowered his hand.
"I always used it to heal the sick and desperate. Seeing their gratitude, their smiles when the pain stopped, that kept me going. Even when I used it to curry favor from politicians and billionaires to promote District X, at least I was treating their innocent kids, not the corrupt bastards themselves."
"But today I used it to kill someone."
Domino processed that. "You killed Sinister. The monster who experimented on kids like Tommy."
"Don't get me wrong. I'm not mad because I killed Sinister. Hell, I'd do it all over again. But I..." He chuckled self-deprecatingly. "I turned Tommy's healing aura into something sinister."
"How?"
Jay met her mismatched eyes. "You know I have many powers, but I can only have around ten at a time. So I fuse compatible powers together. I achieved this with light and dark force manipulation, creating a Polarity power. Like a yin-yang symbol." He gestured at his mind. "I wanted something similar to Mister Negative's ability."
"The guy from that game you mentioned? The founder of F.E.A.S.T.? The one you couldn't find?"
"Yeah. His power inverts the properties of anything he touches. Someone's morality, an object's properties, even powers themselves. He once inverted a darkforce user named Cloak into a lightforce user, White Cloak."
"Damn. Just the possibilities..."
"Yeah." Jay's voice dropped. "And I used my duality power to invert the healing aura into a decay aura. Converting purity into maliciousness. Turning life into death."
Domino grabbed his collar, forcing him to look at her.
They were nose to nose. Her voice came out hard.
"Now look here, mister. I get that you didn't like doing it, but I don't like it when you get all self-critical. Think about what Tommy would have thought if you'd let Sinister get away." Her mismatched eyes blazed. "Also, I don't like this self-hatred parade you go on. You are Jay. You are the doctor. You are the Power Broker. Be confident in your choices. It's just a power. Its purity or maliciousness only depends on its user."
Jay raised his hands in surrender. "I get it, I get it. It was just too much all at once."
"We already have Sinister's locations," Domino said, releasing him. "We'll get him."
Jay sighed. "Dom, that's Sinister. By now, he knows his Savage Land clone is dead. He's probably already started his contingencies, transferring assets, and relocating resources. Plus, all his clones are a hive mind. By now, he knows all the powers I used, including my decay aura."
"This is fucked up." Domino sat back. "What are we doing then?"
"For now? We rest and recover. We can't go guns blazing when he's preparing for us." Jay's tactical mind was already working despite his exhaustion. "Plus, I'm sure X-Men also have a bone to pick with him."
She leaned forward, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "You're exhausted. You've been using powers nonstop for hours. You need to sleep."
"I need to review the data and plan our next move."
"You need to sleep," she repeated. "The data will be there tomorrow. But you're about to fall over, and with this new healing factor, I'd probably accidentally break you if I tried carrying you to bed. Then you'd heal wrong and we'd have to re-break bones and..."
That got a small laugh from him. "Fair point."
They sat there a while longer.
Not talking.
Just being there.
Outside, the Savage Land continued its rhythm.
Eventually Domino pulled him up. Led him through corridors lined with salvaged tech. Past the workshop with half-finished projects. Past the armory with weapons still tagged with Sinister's inventory codes.
To the bedroom at the back, where they'd carved their initials into the rock wall on a drunk night two weeks ago.
She watched him. This man who'd crossed universes to land here. Who'd corrupted his first power to kill a monster.
She'd seen that look in his eyes earlier when he talked about Sinister forcing incompatible powers together. Both of them had taken something pure and twisted it.
The difference was intent.
She lay down beside him, close enough to feel his heartbeat. Her own exhaustion pulled at her, but she stayed awake a little longer.
Just in case.
Jay's consciousness drifted into his mental plane. The mindscape manifested as always, a vast space where his powers existed as tangible entities.
The first thing he checked was his healing aura.
It still looked the same. A young child, glowing completely with soft green light.
Pure lifeforce given form.
Jay knelt before it. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I twisted you into something dark."
The power manifestation didn't respond. Couldn't respond. They didn't have true personalities, just shadows of their original users' instincts.
But Jay needed to say it anyway.
Then he turned to his newest acquisition.
The Darwin-chimera's reactive adaptation was different. Instead of a single static form, it appeared as a humanoid figure cycling through evolutionary states.
First, pure energy. Bioluminescent patterns flowing like neural pathways, mapping potential connections before they formed.
Then a nervous system. Electrical impulses firing across networks, billions of synapses lighting up. The figure existed as pure sensation and response.
Next came the skeleton. Bones grew from nothing, forming in real-time. But the skeleton wasn't static. It shifted constantly. Density increasing here, structure reinforcing there, joints reconfiguring.
Muscle tissue layered over the bones. Red and white fibers interweaving, adapting to phantom threats. The musculature rippled, growing denser in one area while streamlining in another.
Then organs. A circulatory system that rerouted blood flow on instinct. Lungs that expanded capacity. A heart that beat at variable rhythms. A digestive system that could process anything.
Every system in constant flux.
Finally, skin. But even this changed. Tough and leathery in one moment. Smooth and sensitive the next. Pigmentation shifting. Texture altering.
Then the cycle repeated. Breaking down to pure energy, rebuilding with slight variations.
Each iteration different.
Evolution compressed into seconds, but this also led to his body moving against Darwin's wishes to ensure the mutant's survival.
Jay stepped closer. He needed to understand what he'd taken, how it differed from normal Darwin's power since he'd taken it from a chimera Sinister had altered, how to control it.
Before he could touch the manifestation, his Adaptive Power perk activated on its own.
That had never happened before.
The sensation was alien. Instinctive rather than conscious. His perk reached out toward Darwin's reactive adaptation with recognition.
Like calling to like.
Then they merged.
Not the way powers normally combined in his mindscape, where he consciously fused compatible abilities. This was different. Automatic.
The cycling figure didn't become another tool in his arsenal. It didn't join his other power manifestations as a separate entity.
It dissolved.
Broke apart into billions of fragments that scattered throughout his mental plane like stars. Each fragment embedded itself into his baseline existence, weaving into the foundation of what he was rather than what he could do.
The reactive adaptation became part of his biology.
But Jay didn't feel any change in his body. No fanfare. The alterations happened at the cellular level, too subtle to detect. His physiology was rewriting its own code, incorporating Darwin's survival mechanisms into every cell.
This was unknown territory. His Adaptive Power perk had never gone this far. It had enhanced abilities, made them more efficient.
But it had never integrated a power into his biology like this. Never made it so intrinsic that it ceased to be a power at all.
Maybe it was the similar nature of the power and the perk. Both were about adaptation. Evolution. Becoming more.
The perk recognized Darwin's ability as kin. As something that belonged at the core.
The power was no longer a weapon to deploy. It was woven into his being, as automatic as breathing.
But when Jay tried to sense what he'd gained, his body showed no obvious changes.
He focused harder.
Nothing seemed different.
He tried again and again but nothing changed.
The exhaustion hit him. His mindscape began to blur, reality calling him back.
"Screw it," he muttered. "I'll figure it out later."
His consciousness rose from the mental plane. Not quite surfacing but hovering between sleep and awareness.
In the real world, Jay's body tightened around Domino, pulling her closer. She made a small sound of comfort, her healing factor working while she dreamed.
Outside, the Savage Land's afternoon transitioned toward evening. A pack of velociraptors called to each other.
The waterfall continued its cascade.
And in the hidden base behind it, two people who'd survived another day slept.
For now, that was enough.
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