“I...” Scott Summers glanced down at Professor Xavier, who could only frown unpleasantly.

“You know that if you channel your innate potential through a Core Pattern, it will shut off your eyes, right?”

“What?” he blurted out in astonishment, staring at me, then back down at the Professor, who only frowned more. “Is that true, Professor?”

There might have been a little bit of hesitation. “Possibly so. I have not witnessed such a thing myself, of course...”

“It most certainly is,” snapped Cassandra at the other end of the table, rising to her feet, eyes almost sparking. “It is entirely how mutants and mutates with unwholesome, awkward, repulsive, or degenerative mutations control their powers! You dare mislead this child by withholding this information from him?!”

“Hey, Warren, you want to come in?” I said over my shoulder.

“Warren?” repeated Scott, as the door opened, and the strangely not as handsome Worthington son came in, dressed unusually in a t-shirt and jeans. He looked... pretty normal, actually.

“Hey, Scott, Professor,” he waved, but there was a sharpness to his eyes as he looked at his teacher, and a magnapsium circlet was on his head. Without saying another word, he lifted off his shirt, and turned around.

He had an athletic and toned physique, but garishly missing on his backside were the great white wings he’d sported since puberty.

There was a hum and a hiss, and a short sword of soft yellow light manifested from his hand, fifteen inches of humming mindblade.

“Dynamo had Johnny Storm call me up, and Opened me up yesterday after I flew into town. I already told Bobby and Hank. They are on their way here right now to get the same treatment.” His mindblade hissed and vanished as he closed his fist, and he shrugged his t-shirt back on.

“Scott, you want to take off those glasses?” he asked Scott directly, crossing his arms and glancing at the Professor with a mixture of sadness and anger.

“I...” Scott said, tensing and looking down at Xavier.

“If you make the slightest attempt to influence him telepathically, I am going to burn your mind to a crisp right here and now, Charles Xavier!” Cassandra stated coldly, and the air began to hum rather loudly as her eyes glowed.

He didn’t have to know he was outnumbered and outgunned. Cassandra was his equal in talent, and far superior in education and ability. She would crush him in a mental duel.

“I had hoped to learn that skill myself, and share it with my students,” he stated with deceptive calm. “Perhaps The Great Bear might finally be willing to share it?” he inquired directly.

“I know why you were crippled, what you did to deserve it, and if you think I have the slightest intention of overruling The Great Bear Himself in that manner, you are a total fool!” she hissed back at him, making him flinch. “At the very least, I see absolutely no improvement in the morals of the man before me that would make me think he would encourage any change in the matter for you!”

I could feel his anger and frustration boiling inside him. With the resources of the Psions, he could easily learn biopsi enough to cure his spinal damage and walk again, and he could vastly expand the scope of his abilities.

Alas, he had gone messing where he should not have, trying to steal telepathically instead of gaining through study and honest effort, and he had been caught.

“Glasses, follow me.” I got to my feet and gestured to the tall young man as I headed for the door. After only a moment of hesitation, he hurried after me, Warren coming up behind him for moral support.

---

I didn’t go far down the corridor, just through the central room and to the other side, and a sound-proofed room there.

“Warren can reassure you that this is going to hurt like a bitch.”

He blinked, turned to the oddly plain blond, who only made a grievous face. “It totally did. Like popping a hot zit three feet long, and you’re feeling it all the way.” He shuddered despite himself. “I screamed like a little girl.”

“And then his wings melted away.”

“And then my wings melted away, and,” he flicked his wrist, and the yellow mindblade came humming to life there, “all the psionic power I didn’t know I had is now centered on my mindblade, instead of helping me fly. There were a ton of small changes to me, inside and out, that I had no idea were part of my mutant powers.” He waved at his face, no longer so fatally handsome, and Scott nodded slowly.

“Better yet, he can now advance as a Psion, with a talent for the Biopsi and Gravity Disciplines, just like any other Powered.” I flicked Scott’s glasses, making him twitch. “You want to take those off?”

He grit his teeth. “More than anything, Dynamo!” he admitted, clenching his fists.

“Warren, hold him up.” The blond let his mindblade dissipate, and carefully brought his hands up and around under the taller brown-haired Scott’s, forming a Full Nelson. “You’re going to scream, because this is going to hurt. At the same time, you’re going to have to push and keep pushing.” I reached up and discretely webbed his glasses to his head, looking like white adhesive goo. “Making sure these don’t fall off.”

I held my hands up, and green-white arcs of electricity began to crackle between them. “You ready? It’s going to be time to focus, like you never have in your life.”

He grit his teeth, trying to relax and tense up all at once. “Do it!”

I ran my hands down his chest, playing over his Kirlian field, looking inside to find his... Core...

I made a face despite myself.

Holy shit, that was the largest and fullest damn psi-Core I’d ever bloody seen. I’d been expecting something immense, but this was just crazy!

As expected of someone who could passively project that kind of psychokinetic force 24/7...

“Damn. So bloody much potential...” I shook my head, moved my hands in close to his chest, finding the meridian points. “Okay, Cyclops, what we’re going to do is get rid of you, and bring back Scott.”

“Scott Summers!” he told me through gritted teeth, and I just nodded.

“You feel this point right here?”

He gasped as there was a jolt inside him, on the wall of his Core. “Yes!”

“Start pushing there. Just concentrate and push. You’ll feel it start giving, and you have to keep pushing and following my lead as I head up and down your left arm.”

“I’m right-handed!” he blurted out through clenched teeth.

“Tell it to your meridians. Now, Push!”

He began to push, and he began to scream.

-------

It wasn’t fast. As a matter of fact, it took a full half-hour, and I was very impressed at his mental fortitude that he kept at it.

Telling him that if he didn’t do it now, he was so powerful that when his Core healed he probably wouldn’t ever be able to do it, was probably very motivating.

His legs gave out a minute into it, and Warren lowered him carefully, Scott sobbing as I knelt with him, showing him the way. He would have lost his glasses already with all the thrashing, so I was glad I webbed them into place for him.

My hands were on his chest, but it was another pair of hands that went to his head, and removed the circlet from Warren’s. “We’re here to help, Scott,” Jean said firmly. “Share it with us. We’ll help you push.”

Warren didn’t say no, just taking a deep breath, and together the three of them got up mentally and pushed together.

Snaking up his chest, over his shoulder, down the length of his arm, throbbing, burning, sizzling, pounding at him. When they slammed into the node point on his palm, they all screamed together as his will pounded on it crazily. I slapped his flailing arm up and out stiffly, raising it out of the way as an ominous hum filled the room with a sharp and challenging crack of manifestation.

Jean fell back against the wall. Warren let go and slumped back to the floor. Scott was only staying upright because my hand was on his chest, keeping him there, too wiped to lift his head.

I used Vier to keep his arm upraised, letting go to move my hand to his ruby glasses, dissolve the magical webbing, and I calmly removed his visor.

“Scott Summers, let me see what color eyes you have.” I tilted his head up, noting his eyes were clamped shut automatically, in fearful reaction to what might happen without his glasses. “No fear, Scott Summers. Open them eyes for me.”

He blinked, and when nothing happened, his eyelids fluttered, awkwardly pulling open and trying to focus, squinting against light not colored through ruby quartz filters.

Hazel eyes met mine in disbelief as I smiled at him.

“You have green eyes,” he mumbled in disbelief, voice raw and hoarse from his screaming. He was also drenched in sweat, but that was minor in comparison.

“So I do.” I turned his head up and to his left, and he gawked at what was clenched in his fist.

The damn white sword was six freaking feet long. Jean and Warren were both looking up at it incredulously as it hummed there, filling the whole room with white light and a feeling of sharpness.

“Oh,” he swallowed, staring up at it. “Why... why is it so big?” he croaked. “And why isn’t it red?”

“The size of your mindblade manifestation is directly related to the size of your Core and psionic reserve. Your reserve as a Psion is miniscule, but your mutant Core is freaking ginormous. Which should come as no surprise to someone who can constantly project a psychokinetic stream of force that powerful 24/7, just by looking at something.

“As for it not being red, a mindblade is the color of your soul. Red means you have a mindset like, oh, the Crux. Or Doctor Doom.”

“How do I get rid of it?” he mumbled, staring at the size of it despite himself.

“Pull it back into that big circuit in your arm.”

He sighed audibly, clearly totally exhausted in mind and body, but made one more go of it, clenching his fingers about his mindblade and sort of sucking in a breath.

It flowed down into the node on his palm and vanished, plunging the room back into real illumination and sudden quiet.

His arm fell limply to the floor, joining his other one. “That was totally horrible,” he rasped out.

“You’ll be happy to learn that you need to open one more of them for every Level towards a Twenty Psion,” I told him cheerfully, still keeping him upright.

He stared at me.