[Issue] Go West

[Will Stanton]

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For the love of...can't leave a guy alone?  Out for more barbs?

the buoy pinged back.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Leave no blob behind, bro," he corrected.

"Now are you gonna make me tow you in?"

[Will Stanton]

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Fuck all of y'all,

the buoy grunted, turning back into a boy and swimming for the plane.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"I know you've taken in a crap-ton of MGH source material and you're not yourself right now, but we're just worried dude," he said as he pulled them back up to the plane.

[Will Stanton]

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Let's just get home," Will grumbled, re-embarking.

[Samantha McManus]

"Acala said they scanned you and you're an absurd amount of MGH by weight."

"Which might explain why you flushed yourself down the loo while we were over the Atlantic."

[Will Stanton]

"You don't get much more private than the middle of the Atlantic, now, do you?" Will grumbled, throwing Sam's words back at her, as he strapped himself back into his seat.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Bruce shrank into Ennio to dry himself off and said, "About the goin' home. We've got ourselves a little detour first. Can't trust the head honcho with the stolen goods just yet."

[Will Stanton]

"Alright, then let me out somewhere so I can get back in time for my next classes," Will groused again.

[Samantha McManus]

"...truth told, we may want to wait until it's out of your system."

"Or do we want him to know what you're capable of doped up to the gills on MGH?"

[Will Stanton]

"Nothing is in my system," Will lied. "I am fine. 100% in the green and good to go."

[Samantha McManus]

"Will, this may be a very special episode of Xavier's but you know full well how lying to telepaths usually goes."

[Will Stanton]

"I am not lying to you, Sam," Will lied.

"Now, are you going to let me go home, or do I have to call Lippencott myself?"

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Acala, disable communications will ya?" Ennio asked. "Sorry Will, but we can't let ya do that."

[Will Stanton]

"So, it's a kidnapping, then," Will stated, bluntly. "That's what we're going to now."

[Acala]

"I do not want to kidnap anybody." chimes a bit despondently. The robot is not exactly a leader it seems.

[Samantha McManus]

"It didn't have to be anything, but apparently it's an intervention, now."

[Will Stanton]

Will groaned.

"First you tell me to go somewhere private, then you tell me I can't go home, for no adequately explained reason. Like I said, fuck all of y'all."

He sat, cross-legged, resigned to what was going on.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Ennio became Tosh again and gave Will a kind, apologetic loo. "You can't yet, because whatever you took from the crater is pumping you full of a dangerous chemical. Or you just absorbed it. I hate to treat you like this but it just isn't safe to let you go anywhere like this."

[Will Stanton]

Will just grumbled.

"I didn't take anything from the crater; this is a waste of everybody's time."

[Acala]

"Then it's all the more important we get to the bottom of this!"

And with that Acala steers the jet back on course and soon enough Muir Island comes into view. It's late in the day by now and storm clouds are rolling in over the facility that stands like a shining beacon of glass and steel near the island's cliffs. Behind it, sitting squat in the rocky terrain and intentionally less lit and prominent is the round prison facility. The atmosphere in the plane is a little awkward and tense already, but Sam can't shake the ominous feeling of returning to this place. It's not exactly one of happy carefree days even if they're not here because of her.

It takes little more than the briefest of explanations about their strange encounter and Will's subsequent condition for them to be be granted access to some of the research facilities and resources at Muir's disposal.

[Will Stanton]

Will sat in one of the labs, shoes off for some reason, kicking and swinging his legs against the examination table.

He let them splat and deform everytime they hit, just for the sake of it.

[Acala]

"The preliminary tests confirm my findings. Excessive amounts of MGH, most of it seemingly produced by his cells."

"But there is a small but distinct amount that doesn't seem to carry his biological signature. In fact it has no biological signature at all."

"Which is strange because it is a protein and even artificially produced protein is ultimately assembled from biological components."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Then what is it made of? That should be impossible. But then it presumably animated a pile of rubble, so we left normal a long time ago."

Tosh intended to stay unless someone kicked him out.

[Haley Crusek]

Haley, looking miserable on another table in the far corner of the lab, her head hooked up to some diagnostic equipment groaned. First a migraine that showed no sign of disappearing after two weeks, then having to jackass to Muir to get answers, then being poked and prodded endlessly, then being hooked up to this damn machine, and then someone just making wet splatting noises every few seconds incessantly.

“God damnit would everyone just shut the fuck up?”

Wait. Was that Tosh’s voice?

Great. Her ex. The day got worse.

[Acala]

"Apologies. We are investigating a very peculiar phenomenon!"

"That takes precedence."

[Toshiro Narumi]

Tosh moved a privacy curtain aside. "Haley? What are you doing here? You okay?"

The genuine concern in his voice perhaps hurt more than indifference would have.

[Haley Crusek]

The genuine concern *did* hurt. Why did he have to be so god damned nice? Had she fucked up?

She picked up her phone from her side and began focusing on it even though it made her headache worse because she didn’t want to look him in the eye.

“I’m fine. Just a headache. Go...go do your science shit. If you’re here they probably need your help doing....whatever the hell you’re doing that’s giving me organic chemistry flashbacks.”

[Acala]

"It is organic chemistry! We are trying to figure out how a piece of rock came to contain and be affected by mutant growth hormone."

"So really it's inorganic chemistry too."

"It's like it was transmuted from the surrounding minerals."

[Will Stanton]

"They're crazy, Haley; don't let them work on you."

[Samantha McManus]

"Will ate a rock and his hormones kicked into overdrive," Sam says, giving the layman's version.

[Will Stanton]

Will shot daggers from his eyes at Sam.

Metaphorically speaking, of course. Not literally.

[Acala]

"A rock made from MGH if this analysis is to be believed."

"Which they are. Because they're science." the robot says and tilts two of it's 'wings' as if they were eyebrows to frown at Will.

[Will Stanton]

Will pointedly ignored the monitor behind him, showing footage from the Blackbird of him picking up and absorbing said rock.

"Go fuck yourselves," he resorted to.

[Samantha McManus]

"Will, you know how you're a bit literal, sometimes?"

[Will Stanton]

"You think that I absorbed a rock containing MGH accidentally, and now I'm accidentally producing it, and that's affecting me, yes, yes, I'm paying basic amounts of attention.."

[Samantha McManus]

"I think you've taken it to the level of acting like a hormone-ridden teenager whose mum told him he can't get a tattoo."

[Will Stanton]

"And I think you're not my mother, so you can't tell me what I can and cannot do, and when or where I should do it. Alright?"

[Acala]

"Okay! But we could really use that sample you ate."

[Will Stanton]

"You're going to have just about as much luck there with getting a piece of cake Tosh ate last birthday. That's not how biology works.

I wasn't taking a sample for you. I was trying to take more of the drug."