Mutation Blue Fur

Once upon a time, Hank McCoy was wearing a white laboratory coat and reading a very long chemistry paper and feeling quite content with the world.

He had left the X-Men for a while to try something new — working as a scientist at a company called the Brand Corporation in New York City. He had a bench full of careful equipment and a shelf of books and a window that looked out over the skyline, and every morning he made himself tea and got happily to work.

He was studying mutations — the science of why some bodies could do remarkable things. It was the biggest puzzle he had ever worked on, and he loved it the way some people love a river: always moving, always new.

But one evening, working late, Hank discovered something troubling.

The Brand Corporation was secretly developing a serum — a chemical that could amplify mutant abilities. And that very night, a spy was going to steal it.

Hank thought quickly. If he disguised his own mutant energy signature, he could follow the spy undetected and catch them before they escaped.

He synthesized a small dose of the serum. Just temporary. Just enough.

He took it. He found the spy. He stopped the theft and secured the formula.

Then he went back to reverse the serum's effect.

He mixed the antidote. He waited.

Nothing happened.

He ran the procedure again. He waited again.

Still nothing.

Hank sat very still and understood. He had waited just a little too long. The serum had become permanent. It had woven itself into him, deep down, past undoing.

He stood up and walked to the mirror.

Grey fur covered his arms. His hands — always large — now had dark claws at each fingertip. His face had changed: ears that rose to gentle points, bright yellow eyes, and teeth that had sharpened to something more than human.

He stood there for a long moment.

Then he sat back down and ran all his calculations from the beginning. Every formula. Every step. It took most of the night. When the eastern sky lightened outside his window, he set down his pencil.

The answer was the same. It would not change.

Hank sat with that for a while — the way you sit with something hard and real and unchangeable. He did not shout. He did not break anything. He sat, and breathed, and let it be true.

Then he picked up the telephone.

"Professor Xavier," he said.

"Hank," said the Professor's warm voice. "I've been waiting."

"I need to come back," Hank said. "I need to come home."

"The door has always been open," said Xavier. "It always will be."

When Hank arrived at the Xavier Institute, Scott Summers opened the front door and looked at him — blue fur and yellow eyes and all — and simply stepped back, nodding as though nothing remarkable had happened at all.

Jean Grey came down the stairs and smiled and said she was glad he was back.

And Bobby Drake disappeared into the common room for a few minutes, then came back to announce that there was something in there Hank needed to see.

It was an ice sculpture. A large, impressively detailed, somewhat proud-looking blue bear.

Hank laughed until he had to sit down on the floor. Bobby laughed too, enormously pleased with himself.

Later that night, alone in his laboratory at the Institute, Hank pinned a small card above his bench. On it he had copied a line from William Shakespeare — from a play about a prince who had more questions than answers, and who kept asking them anyway.

"We know what we are," it said, "but know not what we may be."

He read it once. He nodded.

He was Hank McCoy. His hands were different now. His face was different. But the part of him that loved books and wondered about everything and cared fiercely about the people he loved — that part was exactly as it had always been.

He looked in the small mirror on the laboratory shelf. A pair of bright yellow eyes looked back.

He gave himself a small smile.

Then he opened his notebook and began writing, because there was always more to learn, and the night was long, and Hank McCoy was happiest when he was working.