The walk back to the mansion had the quality of a conversation that had found a subject worth staying in — the two of them moving through the December grounds at the unhurried pace of people with somewhere to be and no urgency about getting there.
"Storm's first," Raven said. "The mechanism is atmospheric — she's manipulating weather systems by interfacing with the electromagnetic fields in the atmosphere. If Hank can explain the actual physics of what she's doing rather than the effect—"
"You'd need to be able to extend the transformation beyond your body's immediate surface," Ethan said. "The interface has to reach the atmosphere."
"Which should be possible if the fundamental change is replicable," she said. "My transformation can already extend past the obvious physical — voice, weight, cellular structure. Extending a field outward isn't categorically different." She paused. "Xavier and Jean are the complicated ones. The telepathy."
"Because the mechanism is entirely internal," he said. "The transformation would have to create new neural architecture."
"Or something analogous to it," she said. "Not necessarily the same biological structure, but something that achieves the same function." She was quiet for a moment. "Hank will know if that's even theoretically possible. Which is why I want to talk to him before I spend time trying."
"Cyclops would be straightforward in principle," he said. "The optic blasts are a specific kind of energy release — contained by the particular structure of his eyes. Copy the eye structure, copy the containment, copy the mechanism."
"Which means I'd need to understand the energy itself," she said. "What it actually is."
"Hank will have theories," Ethan said.
"Hank always has theories," she agreed, with the warmth of someone who found this reliably useful.
They walked through the back entrance into the mansion's warmth, and the conversation continued into the kitchen, where someone had left coffee in the pot, and neither of them commented on the blessing of this.
"The combination question," he said. "Whether two copied power sets can be used simultaneously."
"That's the one I can't even theorize about yet," she said. "Whether the biological changes stack or interfere with each other. Whether holding one transformation while initiating another is possible, or whether they compete." She wrapped both hands around the coffee. "That's where Hank's knowledge of mutation mechanics will matter most."
He was quiet for a moment, turning something over.
"What?" she said.
"Just thinking about the range," he said, which was true as far as it went.
The range of what her powers might eventually reach was something he was running through the part of his thinking that had future knowledge in it and was being careful about how much of that he let show. Spider-Man's wall adhesion and the proportional strength. Captain Marvel's energy absorption and manipulation. The physical conditioning of someone like Steve Rogers — not super-powered in the mutation sense, but a biological optimization that was its own kind of remarkable.
The Juggernaut was an interesting theoretical case. Cain Marko's powers were not purely mutant — the mystical component, the Cyttorak connection, the specific nature of unstoppability that had a different origin than standard mutation. Whether Raven could copy something that was half mystical in nature was a question even he didn't have a confident answer to. The Ancient One had said Raven had an affinity for transmutation magic, which meant there was a magical component to her capabilities even if it was currently undeveloped. Maybe that changed what was copyable.
He thought about Thanos, briefly, which was the kind of thought that arrived sometimes and didn't resolve neatly. The Titan's physical capabilities were the copyable part — the enhanced physiology, the durability, the strength. If Raven could achieve skin contact even momentarily, and if her mutation could read and replicate physiology the way he was theorizing, it could—
That was a long chain of theoretical ifs. But the direction of the chain was interesting.
The other thought that had arrived while they were testing was the one he was less sure how to raise.
"Can I ask you something that might be a strange question?" he said.
She looked at him over the coffee. "When has that stopped you?"
"When you copy a male form," he said, "the transformation is complete. You become — biologically, physically — that person." He paused. "If you were copying a power set that belonged to someone male, would you need to be in their form to use it? Or could you — run the biological transformation that enables the power while keeping your own configuration?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"Female version of the male mechanism," she said.
"If that's possible," he said. "I was just thinking about the practical question of whether the powers come with the form or whether the form is just the template for understanding the mechanism."
She looked at him with the expression of someone who had identified something in the question beyond its surface content and was deciding whether to address it.
"I'll find out," she said, with the measured quality of someone filing a thing they find interesting. "On my own time." The corner of her mouth moved. "It's not an unreasonable question."
"I didn't think it was," he said.
"You had complicated feelings about it anyway," she said.
"Some," he admitted.
She patted his hand once, with the specific affection of someone who found his particular brand of occasional flustered entirely acceptable. "I'll let you know what I find."
---
The sling ring was on the table in her room when they went back up — the metal band sitting with the patient quality of something waiting for the right moment.
"Still nothing?" he asked.
She picked it up and looked at it with the expression of someone who had been having a one-sided conversation with an object for several weeks. "I can feel something when I hold it," she said. "Like the potential of it. But when I try to actually—" she made the motion, a circular gesture with her fist, the starting movement for a portal — nothing.
"Most people take months," he said. "The Ancient One told you that herself. You have the affinity — that means eventually is a certainty, not a hope." He paused. "What does it feel like? The something."
"Like—" she searched for the word "—pressure that wants to go somewhere. Like I'm holding something that has a direction, and I can't find the direction yet."
"Then you're closer than nothing," he said. "It's not absence. It's pre-arrival."
She looked at him. "Pre-arrival," she said. "That's a strange way to describe it."
"Is it wrong?"
She considered. "No," she said. "It's actually accurate." She set the ring back on the table. "Hank tomorrow. You and Rogue tomorrow."
"Yes," he said.
"How do you feel about that?"
He thought about it honestly. "Fine," he said. "You've been more invested in the question of what's there than I have. I'm approaching it as — finding out. Which seems like the right approach."
"It is the right approach," she said.
The evening went the way evenings went — the mansion settling into its nighttime configuration around them, dinner at some point, the gradual unwinding of a day that had been full.
The night was the night.
The morning came through the eastern window with its usual patience, and Raven was already organizing herself before he was fully awake — the specific efficiency of someone who had an agenda.
"Hank," she said, her way of greeting.
"Good morning to you, too," he said.
"I've been thinking about the order," she said. "Start with the ones Hank can explain most thoroughly. Storm's atmospheric manipulation, Jean's telekinesis — those have physical mechanisms he can describe in detail. Leave the telepathy for later when I understand more about what's possible."
"Logical," he said.
"Cyclops after Storm," she said. "And I want to ask him about his own experience of the power, not just the biology but the phenomenology. What it feels like to use it. That might matter."
"You should tell him why you're asking," Ethan said.
She paused.
"He'll be more forthcoming if he understands what you're trying to do," he said. "And if it works, it affects him too — having another person who can use a version of his ability changes things."
She absorbed this. "You're right," she said. "I'll tell them."
"The whole team?"
"The ones whose powers I'm trying to copy," she said. "It's their biology I'm asking about. They should know."
He watched her think through the day's architecture with the efficiency of someone who had decided and was implementing. She was still in the blue form — she'd been defaulting to it in the room lately, the gradual normalization of what was comfortable — and the morning light was doing what it always did.
She kissed him goodbye at the door to the corridor with the specific quality of someone who had places to be and was glad that the goodbye was a temporary thing rather than a final one.
"Find out what's actually there," she said, which was both instruction and permission.
"I will," he said.
---
The mansion had its daytime school energy — the students in their classrooms, the particular noise of young people learning things, the instructors moving through the upper corridors with the purposeful quality of people who had schedules.
From Hank McCoy's lab, audible through two floors and a corridor, the sound of someone beginning a conversation that was going to last most of the day — Raven's voice and Hank's, the immediate mutual engagement of two people who had found a subject worth excavating.
Ethan listened for a moment with the specific warmth of someone hearing something go well.
Then he turned toward the east wing.
Rogue's room was on the upper floor. Her door was closed with the quality of closed that was present rather than absent — someone inside, awake, not necessarily wanting interruption but not barricaded.
He knocked.
A pause. The sound of movement.
"Yeah?" The voice with the specific softness of the Mississippi drawl that had always been hers, regardless of what else had changed.
"It's Ethan," he said. "Raven mentioned you might be free today."
Another pause. Shorter.
"Give me a minute," she said.
He waited in the corridor, listening to the mansion do what mansions did around them, and thought about the day ahead with the open, unengineered quality of someone who had decided to simply find out what was true.
The door opened.
Rogue looked at him with the expression of someone who had spent a minute composing themselves and was reasonably satisfied with the result. The gloves, the white-streaked hair, the specific quality of someone who was genuinely glad to see him and was being careful about how much that showed.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey," he said. "Want to get out of here for a while?"
She looked at him for a moment.
"Yeah," she said. "Actually, yeah. Let me get my coat."