A New Chance

[dfpiii]

The Fire/ meeting

Paragon - Even as your own posture changes, so does the other man's. He uncrosses his arms, stops leaning on the wall in favor of his own two legs, and the smirk on his face becomes even more pronounced. The change is pronounced. The man simply reeks of horrible, devastating power, the will to use it to crush all of the insignificant pests that infest this world, and above all, he would delight in inflicting that carnage on the world. He reaches out with his own hand and grasps it firmly... it feels as if you have just taken hold of the left hand of God. "Tell me Professor Dark, why must it be only one of those choices?"

Professor Dark aka Paragon

"It does not have to be any of them," Dark replies. He appreciates the aura of this stranger. What potent malevolence. Of course if he can sense it then anyone can - is this why you're watching from the alley? And why just watch? Was this fire your doing or did you - like me - come simply to observe?

Curiosity and the instinct for self-preservation compete. This man is a perfect definition of dangerous... and powerful. But perhaps not risky. With clearly aligned motivation comes clear behaviour. Dark has a grasp of physics which must surely be peerless and he knows that even apparent chaos is predictable, that all matter and energy obey discrete laws; laws which do not simply describe forces, but enable their being.

A passage comes unbidden to his mind from Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses:

How does newness come into the world? How is it born?
Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made?
How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature most it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine?

Dark stays, but not by virtue of his intellectual curiosity. That same feeling which came to him for the first time only a few days ago, like an old lover who knew all his ways and means. Like creeping death and chemical addiction. Beneath the guilt and fear of his ordinary and inconsequential existence, beneath that mammalian brain enticing his race to eat itself fat and bloated, beneath even the reptilian instinct-ancestry that drives men to murder and to screw.

In the deep primal pit of his mind was the grasping darkness of boundless ambition: perfect greed: the brotherless devourer of stars.

Oh, stare far into me and find your reflection! If I could sup your power but by your heart's blood, I should smash the world to find that one unbreakable shard to cut life from you.

Professor Dark pulls back his hand and gives an involuntary gasp, staggered as much by power lust within himself as the power flowing out of this wicked deity.

"...It does not have to be," he repeats shakily, but continues with a growing restoration of confidence and resolve. "Mutants - and having no other basis I would presume you are such - have hitherto displayed powers which are individual and distinct. Fire, shadow, gigantism and so forth. Two or more distinct powers manifesting in an individual I have not yet observed. Further, of those who were present at the explosion - and here I make no assumptions about you - those closest to the blast were extensively mutated and possibly, had any of them survived, they would display multiple powers".

"So, if you'll allow me to make an attempt at a most cursory classification; if you are capable of more than one of those things I mentioned, you would have to fall into one of four categories. 1) You are not a mutant. 2) You are not a mutant who was exposed to the chemical in the same way I was. 3) You are a mutant who has received a higher dosage, or were otherwise more receptive to the chemical, than most of those mutants who have been observed and you thus display multiple powers. 4) You have a single power which allows you to duplicate the functions of other powers - being able to manipulate energy in general, for example, or the ability to duplicate or absorb the powers of others".

"But you can tell me more than I can guess, if you are so inclined. Such as... what are you going to do now?"