Legend

Fresh Start

I loved MIT so much. It was, to sort of borrow and reshape the concept from 'Sherlock,' a mind palace. My roommate Christine was nice, but I rarely saw her--her boyfriend had an off-campus apartment but her family insisted that she stay on campus for the experience. Yeah, so she was gone most days and nights and I had a functional single room. It was great, because I could study all hours of the night if I wanted. Christine and I were roommates the full four years of college, and I don't think she spent more than a month in our room over the whole time. It worked for both of us.

The first year classes were all general study stuff; I'd tested out of the first units of calculus and physics, so I got to take a couple slightly advanced classes in the spring. I ended up just taking the mandatory swimming test instead of the class since I wasn't comfortable revealing my body that much. I took archery in the fall because I wanted to be confident that I would have one class that I could kick ass in. And I did. Thanks to the Hawkeyes' lessons over the summer, I left the entire class in the dust, and the instructor encouraged me to continue, letting me shoot any time he was around, which was most days. I found four friends the first couple weeks, and pretty soon we were inseparable. Cara was there for nuclear engineering, Martha was studying physics, with an eye toward astrophysics for grad school, Margaret wanted to do Urban Studies, and Bess was hot for materials science. It was November before I mentioned my aunt; Emma Harrington-Barnes hadn't gone to MIT, but she was kind of a rock star in the field anyway, and Bess totally geeked out. I found that having the first semester be pass/fail really took the pressure off and I really thrived. I had therapy sessions into October, but the change of scenery was enormously helpful. Finding a gym to box at helped too; I found a really tough one in Boston. They were laughing when I came in, but they were not laughing when I left. It helped to be able to get a solid workout in. I couldn't go full force, but I liked it anyway.  Detective MacIver kept in touch and periodically updated me on the Joker. He was judged to be completely around the bend and was placed in Arkham until such a time as he was determined to be competent to stand trial. Yeah, he didn't believe it either. It wasn't until spring that I was comfortable telling the girls what had happened. They were horrified, but it didn't change anything.

In the spring, I met a couple girls in my history class who were intrigued to learn I'd done the Spartan race twice, and we grouped up to run one at the end of March. We turned out to be a really good team; our time was the same as my individual time the previous year. We ended up making it an annual event; our last race we ran as an elite team. Yeah, we strutted.

At the end of my freshman year, I was able to declare my major in Biological Engineering. BE is a new and exciting field of study where engineering principles in design, synthesis, and analysis are applied to biology on the molecular and cellular level. Basically, the synthesis of the life sciences with engineering principles is used to understand how biological systems and processes work, and guide us in the development of new technologies, materials, and systems for many all sorts of different applications. What I wanted to do was work in mutations.

I thought that I was kind of a freak, but in Cambridge and Boston, I met more like myself. We all had mutations of various kinds; the only overarching similarity was that we would qualify as enhanced humans, not superhumans. Or superheroes. I'd met a few of us at the gym, where we seemed to gravitate because nobody gave us a hard time about being heavy hitters. Most of us knew others, and we kind of made the gym our meeting point every Thursday night. We were all from the many colleges and universities in the area, grad and undergrad students, so it was kind of social as well as bonding. Some of us wanted to go the street hero route, but my experiences in New York absolutely discouraged me. But I found another role for myself--trainer. It started out small, teaching one girl to box, to really get in there and hit. After watching for awhile, I got more of them asking to be taught, and I developed a kind of quick and dirty Systema self-protection class. The owners of the gym watched for awhile and introduced me to a real practitioner, the only one I'd encountered other than Bucky. Nick was surprised at my prowess, but it didn't take long for us to realize that neither of us needed to pull our punches or anything. It was awesome.

Aslyn and I were still close, we texted and called each other a lot, and got together a couple of times a month. I showed her around the MIT campus, and she took me around Harvard. We were strolling around one gorgeous day in late September when someone hailed her. She turned around and said "Oh, shit." I had to turn around too, and there he was. Damian. He jolted to see me. He'd seen Aslyn in the crowd of students but not who she was with. We made some awkward conversation, and he said he had to get to class. He rocketed off, and Aslyn, who knew the whole story, rolled her eyes. I laughed. I ran into him now and then throughout college, and gradually, I had to admit I'd gotten past ...it. In my junior year, I got a job off campus in a coffeeshop and I saw him a lot more then. Our friendship began to reestablish itself delicately.

I didn't date at all my first year, and only casually for most of my second year. I had a couple of boyfriends after that, but it never seemed to feel right. I'd gone through a brief period of casual sex when I started to date again, just to get the Joker out of my system and to see if I'd still like sex with another person or if I needed to get some more help. So the sex was always good, but I didn't feel a really deep connection with my boyfriends, which was why they never lasted. I wasn't too worried, though. I had a lot of stuff I wanted to do before I settled down.

In the summers, damned if I didn't go back to New York and work at Wayne Enterprises. He was building a cutting-edge unit in biological sciences and engineering, and I learned a whole lot, enough to get college credit for it before my junior and senior years. I also popped down periodically to see Dr Reynaud and we wrote two more books together. I'd been beyond surprised when my first royalty check had found me at MIT my first year. I stayed at the tower during the summer (different room, though) and sparred with my uncle as well as helping him teach when I had the time. Mr Stark was disappointed that I was studying biological engineering, as it was the one thing he didn't really do with Stark Tech, but he was gracious in defeat  and turned out to be pretty good company, although we could clear the rooftop deck when we started arguing about engineering principles. He paid for my Brass Rat as he'd promised when I graduated from high school, and I took great pride in showing him and Colonel Rhodes when I went back that summer.

After I graduated, I went to the University of Southern California for their Masters in Biokinesiology , which was an understanding of the causal links between biological mechanisms and purposeful movements that accomplish complex behaviors in the environment. It also enabled understanding of how the human body adapts to growth and experience as well as to injury, disease, and aging. Biokinesiology integrates the study of movement at the molecular, cellular, organ and systems level, allowing for  a unique, interdisciplinary perspective of the biological bases of normal and disordered movement.

J and I had a plan. He'd gone to school at Stanford for psychology on a football scholarship, then to med school at Johns Hopkins. We were scheming to have sort of a mutant-focused business. He was interested by my mutations and fascinated by the others I told him about. A lot of us had some sort of damage of one sort or another. To see if he could deal with  it, I told him about the Joker and how I'd gotten through that. It turned out to be quite a learning experience for him. So he was going to enter psychiatry and take care of the minds. I was going to work on the bodies. I wanted both to study the mutation, assembling an anonymous data bank of genetic samples for study, working to develop each person's physical abilities, possibly incorporating a physical training component.

Both Mr Stark and Mr Wayne were interested in our plans and neither one wanted the other to win. Eyeroll. So we were setting up kind of a joint venture. They were bankrolling it, or would be when we got going, providing both financial support as well as patients. Emma's old frenemy Constance was beginning an extended process of retiring, and there was going to be a definite void in psychiatrists who specialized in superhero problems. I'd be working with Dr McCoy from the X-Men with the genetic stuff, but as far as the physical therapy and training went, I was blazing my own trail although I conferred a lot with Uncle Bucky, who was very engaged with our plans. I was going to be studying and training heroes, both super and street level. J being younger, I started first to phase in our operation. Since we'd be starting out small, Mr Stark made space available in the tower, plus the use of one of the guest rooms since I expected to be a little obsessive while I got set up. I started work on the first of June.

Descriptions of Alex's programs are slightly amended versions of the programs at MIT and USC.