"Damn scary. From what you’ve told me, I’d say that he’s at Ludgate’s level. Maybe stronger.

"No, he doesn’t seem to have the megalomania that Ludgate did. He’s focused on Nur, of course, but he’s mostly concerned with healing damage. He definitely doesn’t want to make any major changes to the status quo. I’ll contact you if that changes, of course.

"What’s he doing right now?

"Basically, creeping everybody out…"

"Will?"

"Yes, Jean?"

"Please stop making the table sprout branches," she asked in a pained voice.

He nodded, snapping a twig off the table leg and pocketing it. "Sorry about that. I’m trying to figure out how to focus the energies correctly."

"Why not just use the Danger Room?" Warren asked.

"Because it’s all illusion. There are no natural forces to manipulate."

"We’ll train outside today, then," Ororo told him.

He nodded again. "I’ll give Bobby a hand with lunch."

After Will had left the room, Scott let his head thunk against the table. "I don’t know how much more of this I can take."

"He’s not doing it intentionally," Rogue informed him somewhat defensively. "It’s just like before. He’s had a power boost, and he’s adjusting."

"Rogue," Scott said wearily, "he turned our dogwood tree into an Ent. I’m never going to be able to go near the thing again."

"He hasn’t done anything destructive, at least," Betsy commented. "I talked to Amanda last night, and she said that Ludgate became a walking body count."

"That’s true," Jean conceded. "He hasn’t become any more aggressive than usual."

"What do you mean, ‘than usual’?" Warren asked.

Jean thought for a moment about the best way to phrase her response. "It’s something that I’ve sensed with Quicksilver, too. Sometimes, they both ‘get’ something instantly… Pietro, due to his speed, and Will, through intuition. And they both get annoyed when the rest of us need time to catch up."

Betsy thought about that. "Alison did the same when she heard somebody else sing or play an instrument. She has perfect pitch, and can’t stand sour notes."

"And Will just got a whole new layer of awareness tacked on," Scott mused. "Great." He looked towards Rogue. "Have you noticed anything different about him?"

"Well," she admitted, "the new tattoos are taking some time to get used to."

"I thought they faded away."

"They did. But they have a tendency to pop up again out of nowhere… and not always in the same spots. It seems to depend on what he’s doing at the moment."

"That would make sense," Topaz said as she walked in and sat at the table. "The animals represent different aspects of his new powers. Their appearance will reflect what he’s concentrating on."

"I haven’t looked at them too closely," Scott admitted. "What’s there?"

"So far," Rogue said, "I’ve seen a deer, elk, fish, bear, seal, fox, otter, eagle, and what I think is a lion. And there’s a sun and moon."

"The astrological parts are obvious," Ororo said. "What about the others?"

"The fish is probably a salmon," Topaz clarified. "They figure into Celtic mythology. Everything but the lion was native to Ireland at some point. It might be there because it’s the biggest land-based predator."

"Or the king of beasts," Ororo suggested.

"Maybe," Topaz agreed.

"But how will all of that affect him in the field?" Scott asked.

"The best way to find out…"

"Ready, Will?" Ororo asked an hour later.

"Ready."

They were in the back yard of the Mansion, where, Will stood in the center of a circle formed by the other X-Men. Xavier and Topaz observed from a few yards away.

"Any suggestions?" Xavier asked Topaz quietly.

"Lob him a few softballs, then crank it up slowly. He’ll probably overcompensate at first."

Xavier nodded, then sent a mental suggestion to Jean. She lifted a pile of squash balls with her mind, then started tossing them at Will.

Will batted them aside, almost casually. "Try a few at a time," he suggested. As the next round… a group of four… came at him, he became a blur of motion, swatting them away.

"I thought you didn’t want to use your other powers," Scott commented.

"I didn’t."

"So why the super-speed?"

"I didn’t use it. That was in normal time."

"…Oh," was all Scott could think to say.

"So your reflexes have been enhanced," Henry said with a nod.

"Looks that way," Will agreed. He took a moment to sniff the air. "Sense of smell might be sharper, too. We should probably test that in the lab. Fewer variables."

"What about offensive moves?" Bishop asked.

Will grimaced. "I’ve got plenty of new ones. Unfortunately, most of them seem to be instantly lethal."

"Such as?"

"I’d really rather not say. They’re a bit grisly."

"Talk," Ororo said firmly.

"Okay," he replied with a shrug. "I could set the phosphorus pockets in your body alight. I can alter the way that the water in your system behaves, or make any plant life you’ve eaten recently decide to take root and grow to full size…"

"…You can stop talking now," Ororo said in a faint voice.

"You were warned. And knowing how to do it doesn’t mean that I intend to."

"What do you intend to do with these new powers?" Xavier asked.

"Exactly what I said from the beginning: Counter Nur, and lessen the effects of environmental damage."

"How?" Scott asked him.

"You saw what I did to the front door. I can do that to anything made of wood. Imagine what I could do in a flood zone if every board in a wrecked house became an individual tree, with full root systems. It’d be an instant response to the conditions we encountered in China."

"Maybe you should carry some wood chips somewhere on your uniform for that very purpose," Henry suggested.

Will seemed to consider that for a moment, then shook his head. "No, that would almost guarantee that I’d introduce invasive species into an area. I’m better off working with local plants."

"What about the other aspects of the power?" Betsy asked. "The tattoos, for example?"

He shrugged out of his shirt, then held his hands out in front of him, palms up. The tattoos flowed over his chest and back. He stretched his arms behind his back, then turned his gaze over to the lake.

"I don’t know about you guys, but I feel up for a swim."

"How long’s it been since he came up for air?" Warren asked Logan.

"Least five minutes." He turned to look at topaz. "Lemme guess. There’s a seal tattoo on him somewhere."

"It was on his ankle, last I looked."

Ororo sighed and rubbed at her temples. She was getting a headache. "Please ask him to come up, Jean."

Will’s form slid underneath the water and moved back to the docks, where it resurfaced. He waded towards them until he was waist-deep in the water, then pushed his hair back, out of his eyes. "Yes, Boss?"

"That’s enough," Ororo told him. "Come on out."

Will nodded and stepped out of the water. As he dried himself off with the towel that Bobby had handed him, Ororo leaned towards Rogue. "Has he lost weight?" she asked quietly.

Rogue nodded. "About fifteen pounds. All fat. God knows where it was hiding. I wouldn’t recommend the diet plan, though."

"It’s a brutal one," she agreed. She stepped closer to Xavier and Topaz. "What else should we check?"

"He should have a defensive move or two up his sleeve," Xavier mused. "I’ll tell Logan to try to pin him to the ground."

As they were talking, Will finished drying off, then squatted down for a few moments, studying the ground. Reaching down, he picked up a small piece of broken twig from a burning bush that was nearby, and twirled it in his fingers.

Logan, meanwhile, had confirmed Xavier’s request, which had also been relayed to Scott. Logan crouched, then leapt towards Will with a roar.

Will tossed the twig into the air between himself and Logan. Within the space of two eyeblinks, it had grown into a dense bramble, about a cubic meter large.

A bramble with lots of thorns.

"I am sorry, Logan."

"I said shaddup, Chuck!" Logan snapped as he yanked out yet another thorn.

"Well," Henry mused, "You must admit that it’s a damn effective maneuver. It would be useful for crowd control, as well."

"Maybe," Logan grunted, "but it probably would’ve killed a normal person."

"Where is he now?"

"The barber," Xavier replied. "He said that he couldn’t think with all that hair. After that, he’s going to Hawaii to train with the rest of his team."

"His team?" Logan asked with a raised eyebrow.

Xavier shrugged. "His idea, his money. I’m not particularly territorial."

"Says the man with his initial on five teams."

"Four," Henry pointed out. "Excalibur is a full word."

"Where are your tats?" Pyro asked.

"I told them to take five," Will replied as he and Rogue entered the residence wing. He was dressed in short sleeves and khakis. "I didn’t feel like fielding twenty questions from the barber."

"Your older tattoos are also missing," Ororo observed.

"They were incorporated into the new ones."

"So where did they go?" Bobby asked.

Will pulled up a sleeve of his shirt. A crowded jumble of tattoos covered the arm underneath. "I look like a member of the Irish branch of the Yakuza underneath."

"Do we have anybody in the visitors’ center right now?" Rogue asked.

"The last batch left about an hour ago," Domenic told her. Sighing, he rubbed at his temples. "We really have to get the gift shop up and running."

"I’ll start working on it tonight," Will promised. "Should we run it ourselves, or hire it out?"

They considered that for a while, deciding that hiring a local resident would be beneficial for the local community, help with public relations, and be one less headache. Domenic made a note to see if any students at the local high school and community college would be interested. "We should do a background check on them before hiring them," Ororo declared.

"That was a given," Will agreed. "Okay, everybody get changed and gear up. We’ll train on the beach on the east side for now. Meet you out there in ten minutes."

Once everyone was in uniform and outside, Will suggested an exercise in combining power effects. "Topaz, I’d like you to monitor me as we’re doing this… and Meggan, too."

"No problem, boss." Topaz floated a meter or so above the ground, folding her legs into lotus position. "Just in case Domenic makes the earth move," she informed them.

"I thought that was Bobby’s job," Rogue quipped. They all laughed as Topaz and Bobby blushed.

"Okay, let’s get started," Will told them. "Just give me one second…"

Raising his hands so that they were parallel to the ground, he let the energies of the earth flow through him and back sown into the soil at his feet. After a few seconds of this, Will’s new awareness shifted to align with the local natural forces. "Ready."

"What’s first?" Bobby asked.

Bobby nodded. "I’ll start," he told St. John, as he aimed a blast of cold into the air. St. John followed a few moments later with a tightly controlled stream of flame. The spot where the two combined discharged a mix of steam and cold rain, which dripped onto Will’s head.

"Meggan," Topaz piped up, "you may be a better fit for this."

Meggan nodded, and let loose a mild blast of energy, just as Ororo aimed a stream of lightning. The four energies converged at the same point.

Will let out a light grunt as he dropped to one knee. "You okay?" Rogue asked him.

"Magic just spiked. I’ve got it covered." He made some adjustments to his shields, then stood up. "Any changes I should worry about?" he asked Topaz.

"You’re running hot, but there aren’t any changes to your aura. Want me to try synching with you?"

"You should probably bleed off some of the power, then."

"Right." He thought for a moment. "Domenic, what’s our major crop vegetable in the greenhouse?"

Domenic took a moment to think about that. "Well, we’ve got mixed lettuce greens, soybeans, barley, and sweet potatoes right now. We’ve still got a few weeks until anything’s ready, though."

Over the next few days, the patrons of the local food bank came home with as many sweet potatoes as they could carry, a bag apiece of barley flour, and bags of frozen edamame.

And at Ecologix headquarters, a sign could be found next to a massive pile of vegetables:

After the impromptu harvest, Will spent about three hours on his computer, looking for items that would be suitable for the team’s shop. Ororo, St. John, and Topaz made calls to Wakanda, Australia, and India, respectively, working through their local contacts. Bobby, Rogue, and Meggan spent the time moving some displays around to clear out the area where Will would build the shop later.

"Okay," Will declared at one point, "we’ve got microscopes, telescopes, thermometers, and barometers."

"I have kente cloth, carvings, and cassava," Ororo added.

"I’ve got stuffed kangaroos and digidiroos," St. John announced.

"And I have saris, sandals, and cinnabar," Topaz finished.

"I’ll contact X-Force when we get back to the Mansion," Ororo offered. "James Proudstar was looking into contacts with Apache crafters for us."

Will nodded. "It’ll take two weeks or so to get everything together, anyway. It’s probably best to set up some sort of screening for the work area while we’re building. We should put a safe in the floor, too. It’d be damn embarrassing if we had a theft."

"I can take care of that," Topaz said. "There are a few boxes that won’t open without a trigger word."

"That’ll work." Will took a piece of paper out of the printer and started sketching.

The rest of the team came over to see his work. "No roof?" Rogue asked.

"It’ll be inside anyway," he shrugged, "and it’ll reduce the need for lighting. We should be able to get by with a few LED strips."

"Will this be permanent," Bobby asked, "or something we can take apart if we need the room?"

"Good question," Ororo admitted. We may need to use the space in an emergency."

Will thought about it for a moment, the nodded. "Got it. Torsion boxes."

"What?" was the chorused answer.

He quickly started sketching again. "You build a rigid internal frame… usually made of plywood, which what we’ll use… and sheathe it with a rigid panel on all six sides. Lightweight, but incredibly strong. It’s how they build wooden interior doors. We’ll bolt them from the top and bottom to a steel strip, and a row of them will give us a solid wall."

"So we can take it apart in a few minutes with a cordless drill," Domenic mused. "Works for me. We’ll do the same with the shelving?"

"We could. I’ll add threaded inserts into the wall panels, and run bolts through the shelves. A driver or ratchet will do the job later."

Rogue nodded in approval. "And a laptop and cash drawer will work for a register. We can just put them on a wheeled tray."

"That raises a point," Bobby told them. "I’ll have to set up some kind of database and labeling system. We’ll need some way of sending the money back to the artists."

"Maybe encoding that info into barcode labels would work," Will suggested. "We’ll talk about it later." Glancing at his watch, he winced. "It’s getting late. Should we stay here tonight, or head back to the Mansion?"

"We’d better head back," Rogue decided. "I’ve got monitor duty, and you have breakfast."

"I’ll stay," Ororo told them. "My duty shift here starts in the morning, anyway."

"Same here," Meggan added.

Bobby and Topaz glanced at each other. "We’ll head back, too," Bobby said. "It’ll be easier to set up the database form the Mansion computers."

Will nodded. "We’ll get going, then. I’ll go lumber shopping tomorrow."

Upon returning to the Mansion, Will spent some time in the kitchen, chopping up ingredients for omelets. He returned to their bedroom to find Rogue stepping out of the shower. "Drat," he commented. "I missed the show."

"Maybe there’ll be another showing later," she said coyly as she toweled her hair. "You want to wash up?"

He nodded. "I’ll probably head straight down to make breakfast. Do you want to wake up with me, or sleep in?"

"Let me think about it. I’ll decide before you’re out of the shower."

A quick scrub and rinse dealt with the day’s worth of dust and grime, but Will was somewhat disconcerted to see that his tattoos shifted on his skin in such a way that they avoided the washcloth.

He sighed. "Any chance I can get you guys to take the night off? I’m too tired to deal with mystic visions tonight."

He blinked in surprise when the faded away, sinking deeper into his skin. "Thank you," was the only response that came to mind.

He toweled himself and ran a comb through his hair, than stepped back into the bedroom to find that Rogue had already dimmed the lights.

"Tonight’s show has been postponed because the starts are exhausted," Rogue told him tiredly from her side of the bed. "All tickets will be honored at the next engagement."

Will chuckled. "I’m beat, too. You covered up?"

"Nope. Your turn tonight."

"Fair enough." He slid into a pair of light sweatpants, turtleneck, socks, and his microfiber mask and gloves. He set the alarm, then spooned next to her in the bed. They were both asleep within minutes.

The next morning, Will spent the better part of an hour filling requests for omelets. He drafted Bishop as a driver for two hours, and they went to the local lumber yard, where Will picked up enough plywood to build the walls for the gift shop. The next stop was a specialty carpentry shop, where he purchased enough veneer to cover all of the panels.

The rest of Will’s morning was spent building what was, essentially, a giant veneer press, which would be used to apply the veneer to the panels once they were constructed.

"How long will the glue take to dry?" Logan asked when he came by to observe the process.

"I’m going to give it a week, to be on the safe side," Will replied, as he ran a roller over a newly-glued sheet, removing any hidden air bubbles. "I added an agent to the glue to give me more setup time, so that’ll slow down the drying process a bit. I would’ve just use hide glue to start, but it loses strength if it’s too hot or humid. I’m afraid that a heat wave in Hawaii would make the thing fall apart on me."

"Shouldn’t you be doing the assembly there, so the wood has time to adjust?"

"It’s not really required for this. The plywood’s dimensionally stable, and the veneer’s too thin to make any movement visible." He put his tools down and laid long sheets of waxed paper over the entire board. "Grab the other end so I can add this to the stack."

Two weeks of work by Will was sufficient to finish the walls of the gift shop. Ororo, after some searching, had bound shelving units made of pressed bamboo, which were quickly stocked with the merchandise that had started to arrive.

Both Will and Topaz teleported to various points around the world to pick up items. Bobby and Meggan entered the pertinent information about the items into the database Bobby had designed, and Ororo and Rogue, the professional shoppers of the group, set prices for everything.

"How are we handling the payments to the folks who made this stuff?" Domenic asked, as he stocked a shelf with bookstands from India.

"Debit cards," Bobby told him. The money goes onto the card on the same day that the item’s sold."

"Any responses to the ad yet?’ Meggan questioned.

"Ten. How did we want to handle the interviews?"

"You and Topaz. You can check their references, and Topaz is good at making people feel comfortable, since I can imagine that the person will be a bit nervous. She should be able to catch any obvious lies, too."

"Keep it casual," Rogue suggested. "If that pass muster, we can do a second interview with the entire team later."

"How many hours per week are we looking for?" Bobby asked.

Will did the mental arithmetic. "Well, barring the times that we’re deployed, we’re open ten hours a day, seven days a week. That’s seventy hours. Allow for some overlap… let’s say twenty-six hours per week, assuming that we can arrange their schedules around their classes."

"Barely full time," Bobby mused. "Should we offer benefits?"

"If they’re full time students, they probably already have them. We’ll see what their situation is. They will not get a uniform. If there’s an attack, they’ll become an instant target. We’ll just give them a nametag." He thought for a moment. "Do we have a list of the interviewees’ names?"

"I had the resumes," St. John told him, as he searched through a stack of folders. "Here you go."

Will took the folder and leafed through the contents for a moment. "Good," he said with a nod. "Just making sure."

"Of what?" Meggan asked.

"Call me superstitious, but I’m leery of hiring any teens named Wendy or Marvin."