>>5361478"What are your powers like?" You know he's a lizard, you know he's got piss-poor control, and that's about it. For you, that is not nearly enough-- you won't be satisfied until you know a little more about the nitty-gritty details of his powers.
From the other end of the line, John goes quiet, even though he probably saw that question coming from a mile away. Still, you're surprised he's even talking to you at this point.
"You've seen the news, Elise." He finally speaks, causing you to frown. Since when does he expect you to get the actual truth from the news?!
"Yeah, but they don't really show you that much." You tell him. For all you've seen of the X-Force on the news, you haven't seen that much of John himself. "And I'd rather hear it from you."
"Figures..." He mutters. "It'd look pretty bad for the X-Force if they showed me like 'that' on camera." You can tell John is referring to his own Berserker tendencies.
"Long story short, I can basically do everything a lizard does... I'm fast, I'm strong, I have some better senses, and I can regenerate pretty much every type of cellular tissue in my body." He explains, the words tumbling clumsily from his mouth.
"No kidding," You make yourself sound surprised. Though, with the way John says those words, it's almost as if this is one of the very rare times he's ever legitimately talked about his own powers outside of a clinical setting.
"Yeah, that's actually how they were able to make my suit with a self-healing fabric-- they synthesized it out of my DNA." John sounds a little proud of that fact.
"If you think about that from a scientific standpoint, that's honestly amazing..." There's a touch of wonder in your brother's voice that reminds you of the old John: the easily-excitable scientist-to-be.
"Little things like that are why being a mutant's kind of cool, in a way..." He slowly trails off, and no sooner does John finish saying that sentence than do you hear a sharp, shuddering intake of breath, like all the air had been stolen straight from his lungs.
"What was that?" Something about the way that sounded didn't sit right with you. Not one bit. "You alright?"
"I'm fine." John says a little too quickly, and, in the language of your older brother, those two words almost always mean the opposite. Unfortunately, calling him out on that is a luxury you can hardly afford because there's no telling when he'll hang up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oclY9t0rRbw"Listen Elise," John starts again, voice more serious than it was a few seconds ago. "Being a mutant isn't what you think it is. It's not anything like the comics or any movie you've ever seen."
'No shit, Sherlock.' You think, because, unbeknownst to your older brother, he's basically preaching to the choir; his words make you wonder just how much worse off he'd been than you for all these months. Was he as afraid of hurting you and Matt as you were afraid of losing yourself to your hunger?
>(1/2) 