Issue 1 Downtime

Natalya had made an appointment with Stan as soon as she could and was right on time for it. Still, she poked her head into the lab first, "Stan? Is it okay to come in?"

"One moment, Nat.."

Stan was just inside the door, shifted to his energy form. His arm was outstretched and a thin beam was projecting from his fingers, striking a large tree set in the middle of the large lab space.

On another side of the lab, a female lab assistant was likewise gesturing, causing a green aura to surround herself and the tree.

In response, the large maple was shifting into a metallic sheen while twisting and forming, the branches dancing to an unheard beat.

"Good, good. That's enough for today, Shelly. We'll pick this up tomorrow, same time."

After the grad student packed up and exited, he shifted back to his usual frumpy, labcoated self and waved Nat over.

"Neat experiment," she commented as she entered, "though I have no idea what's going on."

"Power synchronicity, mostly. We were working on a method to quickly adapt to another's mutant power while focusing on the same target- it's her thesis for the year."

"Sounds like it has a lot of practical applications as well," she said. She approached, rolling up her sleeves as she did so.

"Care to give it a go?" He asked, noting her adjusting her sleeves.

"It sounds like fun, but not today," she said. "Sam discovered that someone had been mentally tampering with me and there was some sort of chemical involved."

"Ah.. Purely chemical, or any indications of psionics?" He asked, leading her over to a comfortable chair with a work table, designed for drawing blood.

"Sam thought it might not be a telepath, but she didn't elaborate," she said, taking a seat. "Apparently whatever they did, it was good enough to make me subconsciously beat on myself with my own powers."

Stan frowned, as he ran over the inside of her elbow what an alcohol wipe, before drawing out a quantity of blood for analysis.

"Okay, I'll run this against your standard x-gene cryoplast profile, with a focus on the SHIELD battery of known psychophobic compounds."

He took the blood, putting it in a refrigerator.

"Do you have time for an MR multi-scan?" He asked, gesturing to the large, centrally located machine in the lab.

"I have all the time you need," she said. "I'm off duty until I get a clean bill of health."

Stan nodded, gesturing for her to lie down on the scanning bed.

"You know the drill.. I'm going to scan every square millimeter of your nervous system, matching it to the Muir island anatomical atlas. If we can determine if a particular area has been stimulated or surpressed, that should help us narrow down what was used, and what happened. It'll take about half an hour, so I'll get started on the blood analysis in the meantime. But I'll always be within earshot."

"Going to screw anything up if I keep talking?"

" talking should be fine, just try not to move around too much. It will start as soon as you lie down and are comfortable."

He took the blood to a centrifuge, removing a quantity to start spinning in the machine.

Natalya got comfortable, remaining still as the machine got under way. "We really need to stop meeting like this, you know."

Stan chuckled.

"And miss out on curing you of mind control or being frozen?"

"I think we'd both learn to cope," she said, the smirk evident in her voice even though she was still holding still.

As Stan's analysis went on, he found the usual chemicals in her blood (including what little remained of the previous night's alcohol). There was a strange foreign substance that he didn't expect and that there wasn't on the list of known drugs used for mental control.

after double checking to be sure, Stan turned Nat's way.

"Well, whatever it is, it's new.. And it doesn't break down quickly. We got lucky on that front."

He took the sample to the centrifuge to separate out the mystery chemical, then moved the pure resultant sample to the electron scanner.

" doing ok, Nat? Your scan should be done in a couple minutes.."

"You fly in enough planes, you learn not to be claustrophobic. My nose itches though."

The analysis of the sample resulted in something that Stan might notice right away from his years of studying mutants. Its readings showed similarities with pheromones, closer to mammal or reptile than any other species.

"Well, there we go." He said, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair, waiting for Nat's scan to conclude.

Comparative to her scans from Muir, she was in much better shape (though it would be very difficult for them to be worse). She climbed out after the machine had finished, "Find something?"

"Did you ever, during your time in SHIELD, read up on a mutant named Jerome Beechman? Or our very own Stacy X? They both had the ability to manipulate people with pheromone changes. using chemicals that are very similar to what is present in your blood."

"I read something on them. So Sam was right, possibly not a telepath. Any way to tell if it's actually a mutant or someone slipping me something?"

"That should be relatively easy. If it is a mutant acting directly, the composition of the chemical will be correspondingly natural, showing a corresponding Gilson generator spread. Pills or powders need a much more synthetically based compound, with preservatives, to ensure the effects don't weaken over time."

He took another look at the data.

"Did you check yourself for syringe marks, just in case?"

"I didn't, but I think I would have noticed that."

The chemical seemed to be entirely natural, but didn't seem to have any sort of mutability characteristics that Stan would have associated with the other mutants he was aware of with that power. The obvious conclusion being that whoever this was, they were a one-trick pony as far as the pheromones were concerned.

"It's simple, very compact. It's designed to do one specific thing. And do it very well."

He rubbed his eyes from the strain of the computer screen.

"Do you remember anything from when you were being influenced?"

"Not a thing, though Sam said there was some sort of construct in my mind telling me to forget I'd met someone." She shrugged, "Must have been effective, I don't remember anything out of the ordinary."

"Let's see if your scan turns up any additional clues.." He said, calling up the results.

She was showing the physical signs associated with increased stress, but other than that, there didn't seem to be any actual physical anomalies.

"There doesn't appear to be any alteration or changes to your nervous system.. I think once we clear the chemical out of your blood, we should be in the clear."

"Any way to counteract it? Not that I'm not going to be on my guard, but whoever's doing this has a definite hard-on for messing with me."

Stan nodded, heading to the large chemical refrigerator.

"Pheromone attack is actually a very common x-gene mutation, enough that I've worked with the medical staff on a general pheromone blocker for students who haven't learned to control their powers yet."

He came back with a nose swab a a bottle of pills. He applied the swab to the interior of her nostrils, and handed her two pills to swallow with water.

"It will take time for the chemical in tour blood to break down. Until then, these two blockers should keep you from being susceptible to the mind control totally. Enough to resist the effects, anyway. Give me time, and I should be able to come up with a total block."

He then returned the medicine to the refrigerator.

"You might find flowers smell a little odd, but I'm sure you'll cope."

"I'm not a stop and smell the roses type anyway," she said, taking the medication. "Hopefully we can put a stop to whoever is doing this, but I've got other things to worry about before this."

Stan nodded.

"Be careful. You know how much I hate conducting interviews for replacement staff, security heads included."

He finished with a smile.

"If this is the person I tangled with last time, things won't go the same way again," she assured him. "Anything else you need from me or am I clean?"

"Give the medication an hour for the fullest effects. Other then that, you are good to go."

"Thanks, Stan. I owe you a really nice bottle of wine."

"Chilled, undoubtedly?" He replied, smirking.