Fiction: X-Factor: Jamie and the X-Club
Fic: Jamie and the X-Club
Author: CrabbyLioness
Fandom: Marvel X-books
Summary: Something that should happen in X-Factor: Nation X #1
Rating: G
Word count: 735
Disclaimer: Don't own them. Not making a penny
I'm not satisfied with the voices, but I wanted to post this before it got Jossed on Wednesday.
The door at the end of the long, dark hallway was labelled with a sign barely held up with Scotch tape. The computer printed letters on it read "ScienceTeam". Someone had scribbled "Mad" in the top right corner with a Sharpie. Jamie pushed open the door and heard the unmistakable sounds of Science.
"What kind of untutored idiot would put an intake valve there? Move it here and you can use a gravity feed instead of pressurizing it."
The room was stuffed full of cabinets and lab equipment. In the center of the room was a large table covered in coffee cups and sheets of paper decoratedwith coffee rings. In the center of the table was a model of something. That part looked like every other science laboratory Jamie had ever been in before,but the fact that the model was floating in mid-air while rotating slowly clockwise did mark it as an X-Men science laboratory.
Most of the people gathered around the table mostly looked like they belonged in a regular science lab as well. It was the largest collection of gray hairsJamie could ever recall seeing at an X-Men bash. He didn't recognize anyone -- no wait, was that Magneto at the back of the group? O-kay. Well, anyone except for him and Hank McCoy, the latter being pretty recognizable; and who had now turned with the rest of them to stare at Jamie. "Can I help you, young man?" he asked, adjusting his glasses with a blue-furred claw.
"Jamie Madrox, sir."
"Oh Jamie, yes! Good to see you, how are you doing? What brings you here?"
I understand you're studying the homo superior genome. I've got some information you might want to look at." Jamie pulled a jump drive out of his pocketand flipped it unto the table. "Here's a writeup on a guy we met recently who didn't match the usual markers for either human or mutant genes. The otherbit is me. You know my powers showed up at birth instead of at puberty. I've been told I'm an evolutionary throwback, that my gene sequences predate modernmutants. Dunno if its true, but I thought you might be interested."
The science team perked up at that bit, exchanging glances with each other and looking at Jamie with interest for the first time. Hank stood up and steppedtowards a counter-top. "Could we get a blood sample, Jamie?"
Jamie held up his hand in a "wait" gesture, then closed his eyes and concentrated. After a moment he tapped his foot and created a duplicate. "Is that abig enough sample?" he asked.
The dupe looked around with a big grin on his face and bounded off towards one of the counters, rolling up his sleeve as he went. "Oooo, is that a BioTekmuQuant Microplate Spectrophotometer with Terasaki plates for hemoglobin analysis? Man, you can do all sorts of colorscopic comparisons with this baby!"
Jamie smirked. "Oh, did I mention I used to be Dr. Moira MacTaggart's lab tech?" The smirk grew broader as the faces of the scientists lit up like kids onChristmas morning. "Keep him as long as you need him," he called, turning on his heel and leaving the room with a grin.
The dupe had found a stack of alcohol rubs and torn one open, washing down his own arm. He looked around for a hypo, but the older woman reached for itinstead. "Here, I'll do that." As she took the sample, Hank frowned at the duplicate. "I didn't think Jamie had to concentrate to replicate himself. Ithought it happened automatically on impact."
"It does, but Jamie Prime was trying for something specific. He wanted to summon up all his old enthusiasm for laboratory science and make sure I got it,"the dupe explained. "I can't wait to work with some of these tools again!"
"We can certainly use trained help," one of the men muttered.
"And Jamie trained with the best," Hank McCoy added. "Welcome aboard, son."
The dupe grinned enthusiastically. And if he felt enthusiastic over more than saving mutantkind and laboratory science, he kept that part to himself. There were certain experiments Jamie Prime had always kept him from trying, and San Francisco looked like a good place to conduct those, especially Castro Street. Yes, he was positively brimming with enthusiasm over what the future would bring.