Scott appeared the most affected upon seeing the Professor standing up from the wheelchair he had seen him in all his life. It was an image that felt too alien, welcoming, but all to alien to see.
"For a moment there I thought I had been too hopeful, or looking for an excuse to verify my past regrets, but who would have thought…" Charles Xavier looked down at his legs with disbelieving wonder in his eyes and words.
Him walking again was nothing short of a miracle and to think the price he had to pay was a wheelchair.
To be fair the wheelchair was a part of his identity, one that he had melded into due to decades of him sitting on it. It had culminated the image, both in friends and foes alike, that Professor X was a crippled psychic in a wheelchair.
"You good?" The bald ex-cripple turned to his tax-evading immortal friend with a good-humored smile.
"I feel… better, Logan. Walking again, it'll take some getting used to." He met Jean's worried eyes and gave her a reassuring nod, and another one to Ororo, before turning to the main reason for this unexpected miracle. "You have my thanks, my friend. What you have done for me, hah, I can't even explain it."
The man shook his head, "While I understand and appreciate the sentiment, I have to preface that I don't take payments in thanks. It has a very shallow, puddle depth, ROI value." He said it with a humorous flair but Charles got the feeling that the man was being serious.
Right, his identity was a Merchant.
By now, Xavier was sure that they all had the same idea of who Isaac was, and that was a neutral dealer. He had all the cards, you just had to chip in.
"While I believe we all have some questions, Scott I believe those contacts require your attention." Xavier said, drawing the man's distracted attention back to the box of lenses that the Merchant had graciously offered. And though he couldn't read anything from the Merchant, he could see the interested gleam in his spectacled eyes, which he probably didn't care about masking like he did everything else. Marketing reasons no doubt.
"I would fry them with a blast." Scott said with premature disinterest. "I think I'll stick with my glasses, thank you."
At Scott's logical reasons, Xavier looked at the others and from the looks on their faces, saw that only Ororo and Logan didn't outright discard those lenses.
Quality items he said. Along with a power to analyze objects, abilities and people.
"You're forgetting the smart lenses part. It reads the brainwaves and facial muscle patterns of the person it's connected to. All you need to do it want it to open up a tiny hole or flare out and it will. You can shift it around or contract it too." Isaac helpfully added before Scott's interest was completely lost.
Was it nanotechnology? Xavier recognized the concept, after all his wheelchair had it built in, and since he was a psychic he could control it with just his mind without needing anyone's help or needing to push a button, but for something like that to be incorporated into contact lenses…
Scott paused at the new information, not really trusting of anything Isaac was saying and letting that show on his face, but he took one look at Xavier and took in a deep breath.
"Are you sure?"
"I don't give my clients false details," Isaac responded seriously. "If you want to try them out I'll need to borrow your visor for the integration. Now, I did not have any plans for offering custom duties in this run, but I can make an exception for this one."
Scott frowned, as did Jean and Ororo, "You know what's behind my eyes and you want me to take the visor off?"
"Of course. If you're worried about damages, no need. External influences are not permitted inside the shop." Isaac said easily, discarding Scott's concerns. "And since I've given you my assurances but yet you still manage to damage the shop, it'll fall under shop insurance and you won't have to pay for any damages."
"Ya' sure 'bout this?" Logan asked from his corner where he was watching everything with a critical eye.
"Not really but…" Scott looked at Xavier standing as he did and then at the empty wheelchair and seemingly made up his mind. The X-Men had followed Ororo to the shop to confirm things, and confirm he would do.
He took off the visor with his eyes closed and slowly, ever so slowly, opened them. He heard two gasps as well as a curse as his eyes fluttered open, and for the first time in his life since his genes activated, there was no following destruction.
Scott was still in his dazed state when Isaac took his visor from his hands and made both it and the box of lenses disappear.
"Just give it a few seconds." He said the moment they all fixed their eyes on him as if that was more important than the reason why everything wasn't bathed in red at this point.
They were still in the process of asking how when the box of lenses appeared again on the counter, but this time there was no visor.
Isaac gave the box to Scott who opened it and after cleaning his thumbs, picked up a faintly red-tinted contact and fit them into his eyes. He blinked after doing that for the second one and then his mouth hung low.
"Holy… what the fuck…" Scott exclaimed. They all watched as he looked completely stunned while blinking, baffled and amazed at whatever it was that the contacts were showing him. "It can even calculate the amount of force I need…"
While Scott was muttering to himself like a child who got his first ever toy gift, the others were more focused on Isaac, except maybe for Jean who had quietly drifted to Scott's side.
"You continue to surprise us, Isaac." Ororo said after a moment. Even if one ignored the fact that Scott could now show his eyes without forcefully vaporizing everything in his line of sight, just the fact that the Professor could walk again was momentous.
A miracle like this just couldn't be missed or ignored.
It wasn't a fluke thing. It wasn't an either or situation. Charles Xavier, the strongest psychic on the planet, could walk again. Most might not appreciate something like this, but it filled Ororo's heart with joy.
"Nothing that dramatic. Just business as usual." Isaac remarked.
It was all business on his end. Their reactions and conversations were highly entertaining and he enjoyed each and everyone of them, but nothing came close to the feeling of making a trade.
"That reminds me," the Professor started, slowly waking over to Isaac's counter, and just as well testing his legs, "I recall you saying that you also buy things from your customers, as long as you find them interesting, does that also extend to their mutations, or supernatural abilities?"
"Of course. I'm more than happy to take it off their hands for a fair price. If you know anyone who would like to part with them then by all means, please direct them here."
"I see."
.
...…
[The X-Mansion]
They quickly returned back to the mansion after they concluded their trade and a few more questions to Isaac.
Just like they expected, the moment they arrived and the students and teachers saw that not only was Scott barefaced, but that the Professor was also walking, the entire mansion exploded in a frenzy of disbelief and questions.
They had retreated to the Professor's office, waiving off the questions for later as they had more pressing concerns.
"So she was right. Going there as a customer was more productive than anything else." Warren said with healthy disbelief after the frankly unbelievable recap.
"So what is it? Are we just going to start selling off the children's mutations? Am I the only one seeing how steep the slope on that decision is?" Hank said with audible and visible conflict in his voice and posture. It was something at the back of their neck that they could all feel. This wasn't natural.
"We won't be revealing the existence of the Merchant to the children, but we will be telling them about the options they now have." Xavier said as he stood in front of his desk. Only an idiot would confirm the nature and scope of a Merchant to a bunch of superpowered teenagers.
He had been worried that it would take some time getting used to walking around and building strength back into his leg bones but that was not the case.
The moment he corrected his mental wounds, the Senzu bean did the rest. Even right now he was still filled to the brim with energy that he had no idea what to do with except not sitting down.
"There are students in these halls that will benefit from this. Students, who we know will give anything for a chance to be… normal once again. We can't take that chance away from them. We won't." Charles said.
To everyone in the room, it painted a whole different image to see their Professor and teacher standing there and talking. There was a more boisterous force to his calm words that never used to be there.
"Am I the only one who still thinks this Merchant is dog brains?" Warren asked incredulously despite all the stare he received. "I mean, a wheelchair and a visor for whatever the hell he gave both of you. These are all upgrades compared to whatever those items cost. His profits have to come from somewhere right?"
"Damn right you are," Logan said, surprising Warren greatly, "but know this, I'm not going to be the one to ask him that. As much as I don't trust the guy, asking him about his pockets is bad business."
"So what about the people he turned to feathers? You said you saw the feather vase." Hank asked, getting them back on topic.
"Neither Jean nor I could feel anything resembling life from them. As far as I can tell, they were truly feathers. Synthesized bird feathers." Xavier said with a sigh. "If you're asking about the price to turn them back then we don't know, because he hasn't decided yet."
Scott was seated with Jean who looked a little off on it and had a thoughtful look on her face which Scott noticed but said nothing.
"So what are we going to do when SHIELD and Magneto make contact with him? It's inevitable at this point." Colossus pointed out and Logan, who was beside him, shrugged.
"Ain't you been listening? We don't do shit. That guy gives me a serious case of zoomies, which means he hella strong. I'm talking Hulk and Thor on a bad day, and even that feels wrong. That place might as well be neutral ground as long as he says it is."
Warren looked skeptical, the same as Hank, while Scott was uncertain.
"Over exaggerating much?"
Logan shook his head and poured himself a glass of scotch. "I've seen monsters fight. Real monsters. I know more monsters than I've got claws on my bones, and EVERY SINGLE TIME I get a feeling from them. A warning or a challenge. EVERY TIME."
"What did you get from him, Logan?" Hank, the Beast, asked, being the one most familiar with what Logan was talking about, and the weight behind it.
"Nothing. Not a single thing."
"But isn't that a good thing? Doesn't that mean he's not dangerous, to us at least?" Jean, who had gotten out of her head, asked confusedly.
"You don't get it, Red." Logan downed another glass of scotch before simply taking the whole bottle, to the subtle frown of Xavier. "I get more danger from a wet blanket than I do from him. Tell me, is there any world in which you think a man like him isn't dangerous?"
Slowly she shook her head.
"So that means he is really strong." Warren said shifting uncomfortably. "I don't know how I feel about someone like the Hulk running a pawnshop."
Logan groaned, more from them than anything the wine could make him feel. "Y'all don't get it."
He dropped the half empty bottle with a grin at Xavier that unapologetically stated that he left it half full. His eyes swerved to and from everybody in the room as the serious look came back on.
"It means I won't realize the difference between him chopping my head off and him giving me a glass of water. And since everyone wants to pussyfoot the issue, I'll come out and say it; we better have a damn good reason if we are ever going to fight something like that."
The room fell silent at that, not because it was a surprising dictate from Logan, but because like he said, it was something they had all been thinking but didn't want to say out loud.
The silence was broken by Scott who leaned into the couch with a smirk on his face. "So what I'm hearing is that he gives you the creeps."
"God. You look even more smug without the glasses."
.
...…
It was barely thirty minutes after Ororo and her crew left when Isaac's doors opened and this time, instead of the other crew he was expecting, he was instead met with a familiar face.
He made a show of looking at the time and date on his display before looking at Frank who had waltzed in with a gait he did not have 29 days ago.
"A bit too early, aren't we?" Frank snorted as he came up to the counter. The man looked much fuller in every way possible, both physically, mentally and in no minor esoteric capacity.
He dropped the manual on the countertop. The book still looked the same as the day Isaac gave it to him.
"So what's the verdict?" Frank asked. There was a certain gravitas to the usual weight he carried himself with.
"Well the confidence is there, that's for sure." Isaac remarked.
Frank gave him a grizzled smile. "I took out a man's heart with my bare hands and closed the wounds on its way out. I'm sure that helps."
"I'm sure it does." Isaac casually pushed the book back and pretended as if he couldn't see the way the tension in Frank's shoulders relaxed despite the man trying to hide it. "You're clear."
"Good." Frank simply replied as he pocketed the manual inside his jacket and casually asked. "Saw some mutants come in earlier."
Isaac's only response to that was a head tilt and a raised brow. Frank held up his hands in a surrender as he turned to leave.
"I wasn't asking. I was just pointing out what I saw." There was a dally in his steps as he left. "See you around, shopkeep."
"That was underwhelming."
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