Perfect Synergy
"Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier." - Barbara Kingslover
Have you ever fallen asleep on the roof of a building? I have, and I wouldn't recommend it, it's not pleasant. Sure, it sounds like a romantic notion to someone who hasn't actually experienced it, but in truth it is the dumbest things I had done in the past week. I woke up the next day and attempted to yawn; which was surprisingly painful. What a wonderful way to start the day. One terrible thing about falling asleep face up on the roof was the massive sunburn you would get because you didn't wake up until noon in the middle of August. I groaned loudly as I brought a hand up to my face. With the slightest touch, I was yelling through clenched teeth due to the crippling pain. I looked around for a reflective surface. No beans.
Why would I think there would be anything of the sort on a roof? I don't know, but I really wanted to see how badly I was burned. I scrambled up to a very wobbly standing position. I looked down at my legs and arms, they were burned too. I was such a dumb ass! They weren't lobster red, though, a very good thing, they were just a bit pink. I stumbled over to the door that led back to the interior of the base. With lethargy pulsing through my body I found it rather difficult to keep a hold on the door handle (one of the only doors with a handle in that entire building). After many grabs, twists, and turns, I managed to yank the door open. Once I was able to see down the steps, I sincerely didn't want to take the stairs. There were several flights to that staircase, I remembered that; I didn't want to take the chance to stumble and break my hip. I'm too young to need a hip replacement! But how in God's name am I going to get down from here?
I turned around very sluggishly. Man, I was getting sick of that! If I absorbed energy to juice me up I would just feel twice as exhausted as I did now once I repelled the junk! I couldn't win! Shaking the thoughts from my head I went back to searching for a better way down. Honestly, the only other way down was by falling.
Now that was an idea. If I could surround objects with an electrical field and move them, could I surround myself with an electrical field to break my fall? If I hadn't been so tired I probably wouldn't have done it. But I decided in a sleep exhausted state that it seemed like the best option available! Why I didn't just go down the stairs with an electrical field surrounding me as a precaution still evades me. I was a real adrenaline junkie in my youth, and by youth I mean when I was sixteen, three and a half months ago. Gingerly, I began towards the edge of the roof. I peered over the edge into the courtyard: no passerby's. Perfect!
I walked back from the roof, got down into a running stance, and started a countdown.
"Three..."
I sank even lower into the gravel, causing it to cry out underneath my shoe.
"Two..."
I blanched my knuckles against the roof and summoned an electrical field around me.
"One!"
I bolted like a rocket off the roof. I was about fifty-seven percent sure that I had summoned a powerful enough electrical field to withstand my body impacting with the ground. As I soared through the air, time seemed to stop. Everything passed by me in slow motion, giving me the perfect chance to full heartedly regret the decision I had just made.
I'm going to fucking die! I thought morbidly to myself. How could I do this? Why was I such an idiot? I have no clue. But, as I neared the ground, I just about pissed my pants. My feet connected harshly with the grass and pain shot up to my knees. I rolled over in pain. My hips didn't hurt, my thighs didn't hurt... only my shins.
"Shin splints! Level Mutant!" I howled into the sky as I was rolling on my back in pure crippling pain. Of course I'd jump off a roof and just get killer shin splints from it! Why didn't I even consider that? Wow. I hate my life. See, if I had done proper jump and roll procedure, I'm sure my shins would've bother me in the slightest. But, as I said, sleep deprived. I wasn't making very good decisions. After successfully screaming away seventy percent of the pain I sat up and started to massage the wounded appendages. Dear Gandhi! Never doing that again! Well, probably not ever. With more preparation it was surely doable. But none of that, my legs hurt like a sonava!
I was probably sitting in the middle of the courtyard for about four minutes when I finally saw someone familiar. A certain shy researcher to be exact!
"Hank! Help!" I called to him while waving; hoping desperately that his attention would be caught by my flailing arms. Hank would know what to do in a situation like this, right?
The boy in question turned at the sound of my voice. He looked behind him, in front of him, above him, Yes, Hank, I can fucking fly. After his eyes wandered for a second they found mine and he came jogging over to me. As he ventured closer his eyes widened. Wha-what? Is there something on my face? Say a huge ass sunburn, perhaps?
He tweaked his glasses and muttered in disbelief, "You're burned..."
My eyes nearly rolled out of my head. "Thanks a lot, Sherlock. Now, let's pay less attention to my beautiful face and more to my throbbing shins!" I said sarcastically while pointing to said shins. Hank blushed but lowered to the ground to examine them. Sorry Hank. I wasn't in a particularly good mood.
He barely dusted his fingers over my skin and I yelped out in pain. "If that hurt you, these are pretty bad. How did you do this?" He inquired; never taking his eyes off my throbbing legs. If I hadn't known better, I would've accused him of being a pervert and I would've kicked him square in the chin. Good thing Hank didn't have a single dirty thought in that brilliant head of his, because I've got one mean kick.
I realized I was taking forever to respond. Too busy thinking about Hank. "I jumped off the roof." Was my anticipated if not completely indifferent reply.
I honestly didn't know a jaw could drop as low as Hank's did without dislocating. Well, you learn something new every day.
"You- what? Why!" He stammered and then proceeded to gently probe my hips and back. His scientific fingers, dare I say, gave me chills.
Down girl. I told myself. It wasn't my fault. No guy had ever treated me so tenderly, neither of the guys I'd slept with, not my brothers, don't get me wrong they treat me well, they just imagine me as one of the guys, and definitely not the friends I had made over the years. The only people to ever treat me like that were my mother and Jules. And last I checked they weren't sporting large schlongs between their leg. It was nice to have someone of the opposite sex who cared about your general well being and have completely innocent intentions.
I let Hank finish his examination before I bothered to explain myself. "I decided in extreme exhaustion that it would be cool to jump off the roof. I surrounded myself with an electrical field, ran to the edge of the roof, and jumped. Not really my smartest idea." I admitted. Of course it wasn't my smartest idea! My smartest idea was to stick scissors in an electrical outlet by far.
"Did you fall asleep up here?" I just blinked at him. Obviously. He sighed whilst shaking his head. He gave me a weak smile before continuing. "Sadly there's nothing more I can do besides the traditional treatment for shin splints. Wrapping, icing, and rest. But I can definitely help with that burn."
Well that certainly was good news! I knew I kept Hank around for something! Aside from being so gosh darn cute!
"You can? How can you do that?" I asked in disbelief and awe. To my knowledge there was no way to reduce sunburn redness other than time. And unless Hank had a time machine, which he honestly could have; the kids a freaking genius, he wouldn't be able to help me.
"Well," He pushed his glasses up with his index finger, "a sun burn is just a reaction the body uses to defend itself when it feels as if the DNA in your skin is being damaged. Melanin is released and it produces a mild, harmless, heat to protect the skin. With a topical cream I accidentally invented while trying to make something else I can completely eliminate the swelling and increase recovery. Instead of healing in days, a sun burn vanishes in hours!"
Wow. Hank was such a cute nerd! Who am I kidding; he's still a cute nerd. My nerd. Spoilers.
"Sounds great. But what did you originally create the cream for?" I asked innocently.
This seemed to faze him, which confused me. "I-it was for a... ummm... a science experiment! A-a-at Harvard!" He gave me a very flustered smile. "But enough of that! I'll take you to my lab to get you patched up!"
His sudden lack of composure surprised me. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't the least bit curious. I was also about a hundred and two percent sure he was telling one big fib because, one, he turned redder than my sunburn, two, he looked at his feet as he said it.
"Alright..." I finally allowed. Hank stood first then offered me a helping hand. I placed my hand in his and he pulled me into a standing position with surprising ease. He then wrapped my right arm over his shoulders and helped me walk towards, what I was guessing was, his lab. We spent the duration of our trip in complete silence. All thanks to him being a guilty liar. He knew deep down that I wasn't going to drop our previous conversation and that made him more nervous than usual. I knew that he was lying and that made me upset! I can handle the truth!
A few minutes later, we came to a metal door labelled, Henry McCoy, CIA Researcher & Engineer. So I assumed it was his lab and that Henry was his real name. He let go of me momentarily to reach into his lab coat, which I hadn't even realized he was wearing, only to pull out a ring of keys. It seemed he just picked a random one and jammed it in the dead bolt on the door. Turns out, it wasn't a random key at all! The tumblers inside the lock turned with the key and the door opened. Well, either it wasn't a random key and Hank was really good at finding his key or it was random and he was one lucky bastard! Those thoughts stopped in their tracks when I saw the interior of Hanks lab. It was so huge! It was around the size of my freaking house. Hooooooly shit! There were lights going off everywhere on every sort of machinery, metals tools glimmered in the sun light from the few windows there were, there was a symphony of beeps, clicks, and whirls, and vials of all colours adorned shelves on nearly every inch of the four walls. It really was amazing; they treated Hank like a scientific king! I was so caught up in everything I didn't notice when Hank put my arm back over his shoulders and led me towards a metal examination table in the middle of the room.
Gently, he lifted me onto the table as if I weighed no more than a feather and went to one of the several cabinets on the back wall. I finally came back to reality just as Hank returned with a vial of the cream, at least I assumed it was the cream, and began rubbing it on my arms. He was looking at me as if he wanted a response to something.
"Sorry, you say something?" I asked, hoping that he had actually said something and he wasn't being creepy.
He smiled. "Just wondering where you got that scar on your knee."
Ah. The knee injury from a gymnastics meet in 1959. I had just turned fourteen and I was about ready to compete in the New Mexico Gymnastic Regional. See, I was actually brought up down near Mexico, but when my mother enrolled me in a bunch of all girls boarding schools, the one in Maine was the only one that wanted me. I was too much trouble for the rest of them, too many fights and too many bad grades. Back to gymnastics. Gymnastics was the only girly type sport I'd do because of the physicality. I love tumbling, always have, always will. But that didn't stop me from landing a triple flip on a straight leg. The stupidest thing I could've done at the time, I did. Tremendously! My knee practically snapped out of place and my knee cap was jutting out of my skin. There was blood everywhere. I wanted to keep going but my coach sent me straight to the hospital. They operated that same night to repair the damage done to my patella, fancy nerd word for knee, and told me I could never do gymnastics again. That didn't stop me from cycling, swimming, playing soccer, playing lacrosse, wrestling, or running. Oh, nor did it stop me from doing gymnastics. I'm just a regular girl who didn't know when to quit. Well, actually I do. The time to quit is never. But now I have a fake knee cap made of a dense polymer and hardly any nerves left in my actual knee. Tragic.
"I had surgery done on it." Was my half assed response. No need to go into the gory details and scare off the frightened little chipmunk that was Hank. It seemed as though he was going to accept my terrible answer and said nothing more. I noticed his hand trembling slightly against me and don't think I didn't see the blush creeping across his cheeks. I put a hand on his forearm and said, "I can do the rest if you want."
He looked at me with those adorable blue eyes of his, adjusted his glasses, and blushed a deep crimson. "Yeah, th-that sounds g-good." He nodded before leaving to do something else. As he escaped he ran into the other examining table next to me and then hurried off to a desk on the far wall. He was still within ten feet of me so I could see him knocking pencil containers over. What a cutie. I then continued what the boy had started and then moved onto my legs. Then, completely out of the blue, and I mean this was nothing close to what we are talking about, he asked, "Wh-why do you smoke?"
I had not expected that. Answer was easy enough, though. "My brothers all do it, my cousins and uncles all do it, and so does my father. Correction on the brother statement, my little brother doesn't. Or he shouldn't be smoking. If he is, at his age? I will kill that little bitch!" I ranted slightly towards the end of that. And for that I apologize. I looked towards Hank who was giving me the slightest smile which I found myself returning.
"You want a mirror for your face?" He asked as he picked one up. He jostled it a bit with his hand and it caught some of the overhead light. By some, I mean all. And of course that reflection went straight into my eyes. I was blinded.
"Owwww!" I yelped as I brought my hands up to my injured eyes. All I could see was blotches of white, yellow, green, and fuchsia across my visual horizon. I heard Hank get up from his desk, I heard his footsteps come towards me, and then I felt his presence in front of me.
A hand brushed mine out of the way. "Open your eyes, please." Hank asked so I kindly obliged. I still couldn't see anything so I had no idea what he was looking at. Guess I wouldn't need the mirror after all.
"You're going to have to apply the stuff to my face because I cannot, for the life of me, see a goddamn thing." I groaned. The air around suddenly became charged with nervousness. Was he seriously getting all wound up from that simple request? I guess he was. He placed two fingers that were covered in the cream against my face and spread it around with shaky hands. At least he didn't piss himself or didn't run out of the room screaming. Which I honestly thought he might do still. Guess this was as good of a time as ever to ask what he first intended the cream to be used for. "You never did tell me what you originally concocted this stuff for."
You could practically hear the poor boy try to swallow the lump in his throat. "I-it's nothing important."
Even though I couldn't actually see him I allowed my face to contort into a sarcastic eyebrow arch and a skeptic frown. I sincerely hoped that I didn't look like I had to take a huge dump.
"I... I had manufactured the salve in hopes it would... that it would cure my mutation..." He mumbled, causing his fingers to shake more. He actually got some in my mouth, I gagged and he apologized.
"Why would you want to cure it?" I asked in the gentlest voice I could manage as I spat out the bitter paste.
"I don't want to feel... different..." Hank mumbled again, this time he made sure not to let his coordination be affected by his nervousness.
I looked at him, well, I did my best, placed a hand on the arm closest to me, and squeezed slightly. "Hank, you don't need to hide anymore. We all love you as you are, mutated feet and all."
"That doesn't matter when everyone else sees my feet and they think I'm some sort of monster..." He muttered. I could tell by his voice that he was about to cry. Not a girly cry, but he would shed a tear or two.
I grabbed, more like fumbled for, his chin with my other hand and angled it towards me.
"What does it matter what the world thinks of you? Do you think Einstein would've pretended to be a dumb ass to fit in with everyone else? What about da Vinci? He was all over the map! He was a painter, a sculptor, a physicist, an architect, and so much more! You think that he wanted to fit in? Of course not. So there is no need to hide any of your brilliance either, from your brilliant mind to your even more brilliant feet. There is no reason you should have to hide. There's nothing wrong with you and everything wrong with every single person who tells you otherwise! Show off those amazing feet of yours and don't you ever hold back!"
"But..."
"No buts! You are a mutant, I am a mutant, our closest friends are all mutants. Sure, we all had those periods of doubt when we wanted to hide what we could do to fit in. But let me tell you this, I buried my abilities deep down inside and became so depressed that I started drinking. I only buried them because I was afraid of what my parents would say or how they would react. Trust me; they were more pissed about the alcohol! There are going to be people out there who will ridicule you for being different you'll just have to turn around, stick your middle finger right in their face and tell them to shove it! If they've got a problem with the natural you, they're the ones who should change. Not you."
My vision finally returned, just in time for me to see Hank smile at me. This smile was bigger than all the others, it was so sincere. In some way I thought that I got through to him, which is definitely good. I couldn't watch Hank retreating into his cocoon any longer. I removed my hand from his chin and clasped his shoulder. No words were spoken. Then again, words weren't necessary after that amazing pep talk. Well, that was until I caught sight of something underneath Hank's desk.
"Hey... is that a soccer ball?"