Westbrook Academy for Metahumans: Forums

Why are parents so paranoid? I pulled the phone away from my face and sighed, then put it back to my ear. “Moms. Mom! No, I don’t even feel that sick anymore. I’m fine! No, I am too fine. No, I’m not talkin’ back, I’m just tellin’ ya the truth. I don’t need to go, Moms.”

I pause. Listen. “Cause it was just a stupid flu I prolly got kissin’ this girl in art class who has it, Mom. She’s still sick. What? No, I…yes Mom, fine, I’ll buy her some flowe-…no, I don’t have a girlfr-…Moms! Chill out, ok?” I roll my eyes, wait for her to get her current romance advice out of her system. “Yeah Mom. Ok. Yeah, I’ll do that, thanks. What? Moms, I already told you I’m fine. Moms, safe an’ sorry ain’t no thing, there’s nothing gonna be sorry for cause I was never not safe. “

This was just too much. I was so gonna lose it. “I said I don’t need to go.” Crap. Even I could hear the whine in my voice now. She was gonna tune me out. “Cause I got other stuff I need to do. Yes it’s important. Like…stuff, that I gotta do, Mom. Come on.” Damn. That was so not gonna cut it. “Ugh, fine. Fine. Yes, fine, I’m going, and just not do anything else and lose the whole rest of my day.” She doesn’t like that one bit. “No, you don’t need to get Pops on the phone. No, I’m sorry Moms. Right. Yeah, I can find it, I got a map app. Hold on, I’ll get a pen. Yeah. Ok. Got it. Yeah, I’ll call right after. Love you too Mom. Yeah, I will. Bye.”

ARRGH! My Moms was completely buggin’ on me an’ now here I gotta go trying to find some stupid room in some stupid college building looking for some guy that knows somethin’ ‘bout somethin’ that has somethin’ to do with my scorp I got goin’ on. Que tonteria. To make it worse, just as I get the directions to get there up on my phone, I get a text. Peyton. Did I wanna to meet up? Hell yeah, I wanted to meet up. I send back ‘sry need rain chk sumthin cam up’. So not fair. At least she replies that she’s cool to meet up some other time. Still, getting sent by my Mom to meet up with some professor she knows to check up on my meta just cause I had a stupid flu was just too friggin’ lame.

The college is real easy to find; the room inside it I’m looking for? Not so much. So I’m standing in a hallway t-intersection wonderin’ if I should be goin’ left or right, when some lady pops her head out a door to my right an’ finally locks eyes on me. “There you are!” she says. She was kinda plain looking and dressed like she worked here. I guess she’d seen a picture of me, or the spines gave me away.

“Here I be,” I said, and shrugged.

She smiled and said “Come on in here.”

I walked in and looked around while she introduced herself. It mostly looked like an office, but in the back they had some equipment of some kind. She took me right to it, sat me down in a puke-green hard plastic chair by a desk loaded with two computers and all kinds of weird other medical-looking stuff. “So you haven’t been feeling well?” the lady said.

“I’m fine.” I did my best to make it nonchalant. Cool. Calm. Definitely not at all defensive. “Had, like, a lil’ flu? Its goin’ ‘round. But scorp-healin’ totally kickin’ in.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said, obviously setting something up on her equipment. “You know, you’re a pretty fascinating kid. It’s really pretty remarkable how well your genetic code has adapted to the restructuring.”

“’s me. I be awesome down to the DNA.”

“Mmm-hmm. I would’ve thought you’d have a more chimaeran appearance, too, honestly, from just reading through the data in your files. “

“Be a crime against nature to be makin’ a face pretty as this all junked up, so Mother Nature didn’t.”

She looked up at me, finally registering what I was actually saying. Or, y’know, taking a second to admire my looks. Either way. She then gave me a wry grin. “Well, I’m glad you’re in high spirits. It really is a pleasure to be getting to study your particular genetic metamorphosis. And all the detailed notes your parents have made have been a huge help in understanding.”

“Moms and Pops be knowin’ their thing, yo.”

“They sure do, but we do pretty ok here as well. Now, which arm would you like us to draw blood from?” She looked at her screen. “And, um, venom?”

I sighed and gave her an arm.

“Ok, now, since you’re new to this facility, we’ll start a new file for you from scratch, to better isolate new or environmental factors. Especially several we already know are prevalent in the area. Then we’ll do some analysis, and finally work over some results. How’s that sound?”

Like the lamest day ever. “That’s cool. Let’s do it.”

The lady gave me a smile and got started.

Missing out on a cheerleader for this. Stupid paranoid parents.

What a crappy Monday. Well, maybe not entirely, but I’d had another of those mandatory counseling things during school, attitudes were flyin’ hardcore from the chicas after (and in front of the freakin’ new kids), and now I had to go on another visit to the professor lady over at the college. Except she was busy; everything got done by some chubby assistant guy who was all clumsy at everything. He was younger, and one of those guys who seem to always be sweaty no matter what. I couldn’t help think to myself, really prof? That’s your backup? Not really fair but it really had been a bad day.

Finally all the standard stuff was done, and he did the special tests that were up. They were mostly skin things this time. Toughness, sensitivity, some ultraviolet light stuff, permaspine samples though he didn’t have me scorp out for a sample of those, he even asked if it was ok to gimme a cut an’ see the scorp-heal do its thing while he filmed it. Fine by me, and I’d been hoping for something just like that.

“Alright, that’s the last of it. Any questions?” It kinda looked like he was hoping there wasn’t any when he asked. Oh well, guess it was gonna be a crappy day for him too.

“Uh, yeah. Can, like, I help anyone?” It wasn’t quite the right question, but I didn’t really know how to start. The lame-ass counselor had told me to; said that if I really was serious, the people goin’ lab-rat on me maybe could help.

Obviously it wasn’t the right question. The dude looked confused. “You are. You’re being very helpful to us, with all this data, it will help us very much. There’s a lot to be learned.”

This dude is so lame, I thought, and then shook my head. Focus, focus. “No, I mean, like, savin’ people. Like, help ‘em wit’ my heal thing, or…uh…somethin’.” Ok, fine, I was sounding pretty lame too.

He furrowed his brow, no doubt tryin’ to figure out what I was asking. “You mean…can you heal someone else the way you heal?”

“Um, yeah.”

“I…don’t see how. We’re working on understand the full mechanics of it, obviously, but your regeneration stems from systemic changes on the deepest levels of your physiology. You would need to replicate the changes or mimic the effect, and those sorts of things aren’t really in your profile that I know. Maybe when we’ve fully understood the changes to you, analyzed how all the variables came together to render you as you are, we’ll be able to use it as a template to help everyone heal faster. Meantime, though…” he shrugs his shoulders.

That answer got me double annoyed. First…this dude sounded like he knew what was goin’ on after all, kinda made me feel bad about how I was thinking before. But more importantly, that wasn’t the answer I’d been looking for. “That ain’t happenin’ anytime soon, either, is it?”

He shook his head.

“Lame,” I said. I tensed my arm in that familiar way, and popped a spine along it. “I be hurtin’, but ain’t built for helpin’.”

The guy starting going through the files on the desk, rooting through the papers for a second before coming up with a stapled packet. He rifled through a few pages of that before looking back up at me. “There is one more thing. The professor was going to ask you about it once we’d gotten past the preliminaries we’ve been working up on your venom samples, and possibly after we’d done some explorations of your venom glands, but…” he raised an eyebrow, the question obvious.

“Go ahead, let me know. What about my scorp-juice?”

“Well, there’s been some emerging research on analyzing the peptides in scorpion venoms for possible medical uses. Analgesics, for one, but I’ve heard there’s been promising use in combating things like tumors, especially in the brain. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you given who your father is, but scorpion venoms are notable for the specificity of their effects; some are completely harmless to mammals while utterly deadly to insects, or vice versa, and so forth. Studies of them has led to promising natural pesticide research to keep pests out of food supplies.” The guy was warming up, sweat on his upper lip, eyes bright. Could tell this was the kinda thing he lived. Better him than me, but I liked where he was going with it, enough that I didn’t even interrupt him to let him know that yeah, duh, I knew tons of bug fact.

“By isolating the protein molecules and determining their specific effect within cells,” he continued, loosing me a little, “it may be possible to further refine that sort of specificity. End state you may end up with a serum created that is harmless to and has no side effects on patients, but envenoms and kills things such as cancer cells. Near term, though, even less miraculous applications could have results, and the research into variations that use the neurotoxic properties to deaden nerves to stop horrid pain with true no side effects or addictive properties would be a revolution in pain management.”

He sounded, by the end there, like he was ‘spectin’ me to break out into applause or something. But hell, from what I could make out he was sayin’, they could be turnin’ my scorp-juice into some hardcore meds. Wasn’t what I’d been lookin’ for when I’d got here, but it wasn’t bad at all. New meds to be helpin’ people. “So you could be doin’ all that wit’ my venom?”

“Well, there’s still a lot of research to be done, but the fact that your venom is derived from a hybrid human structure might speed things along appreciably. As I said, the professor was waiting before proposing…”

“I’ll do it. Sign me up.”

“There are some forms, might need some parental…”

“Bring ‘em, then. I’ll sign me up. They’ll sign.“ I know my folks will. They have to.

“Ok, great. I’ll double check with the professor, and get the forms.”

“Tight. I’ll be here.”