Learning To Speak

[Oct 3rd, 2008]

Remember when I mentioned how little my parents had to do with my life? Well, that's still true, though neither my mother nor father were into adultery anymore. My life until graduation consisted of spending time with Syn and learning as much as I could. My mother's new hobby was shopping and drugs. The money my father made was used for clothing sprees and cocaine. She was in her 50's and has let go of her health while my father was even worse. He decided to spend the money he made on gambling and alcohol. The illegal casinos loved him and he spent most of his time as a high-functioning alcoholic now. They still weren't interested in me either. My father saw me as a disappointment because I "never made it big" as he says and my mother was very… neutral when it came to me. Overall their health was dwindling, and they held little interest in me and whatever I was doing.

I'm smart and fit enough to do literally anything I want in this world and I hold no real feelings about them either. The only thing holding me back from either killing them or just letting them fade completely was appearances. If the world knew my face and knew I did nothing for them with the money I'll make in the future? That would cause some backlash I didn't want to deal with. I'll keep them healthy and give them peace from paying a couple of bills but that's it. I won't fund their ruinous behavior. I'll spring it as them being abusive, but I'm still supportive of them as my parents regardless. Good press and any argument they have about wanting more money will be null. Two birds with one stone.

The reason for talking about this now is because I'm legally an adult now and I have the money to move without relying on them. This house only holds fond memories of me and Syn together and leaving it has been the easiest thing for me yet, especially because I still have Syn with me.

I'm now a proud owner of a cozy apartment in NY, NY. I say proud, but I could build something much nicer easily. The point of moving here was twofold. To start my business empire and to get to Douglas Ramsay, otherwise known as Cypher. Stealing his mutant power will do him some good anyways. He has a major inferiority complex and he became addicted to deciphering the internet. Weak news in my book. This power is going to allow me to better help Syn and it's going to be imperative when building my empire. Allowing me to intuitively learn, read, write, and speak any language to exist will be gold, especially since it should allow me to understand genetics to an unparalleled level.

The apartment itself isn't bad. It's a 1 story, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room apartment. It was cozy and seeing as I had almost nothing it was also bare. It was a strategic move, not a comfortable one. I've been here for a day and I'm enjoying myself and so is Syn. She keeps hacking into people's computers just to scare them and truthfully I find it adorable.

[8 pm, same day]

Ok Finding him was crazy easy. His address was listed in the phone book. I know, with all the tech a phone book is surprising to hear that right? Well, a lot of people forget about conventional tracking methods and it took me less than a minute to find his dad's name. His dad being a famous lawyer was also helpful.

[2 am, next day, Ramsay household]

Remember when I said I was training my immunity power. I knew days like this would come so I purposely saved a couple of the drugs. Nothing harmful or addictive just something to help baseline humans and some of the more susceptible superhumans stay asleep while I rid them of their problems. This was the exact situation I had in mind. He hasn't unlocked his mutant power but that didn't worry me. My power can drag out the gene even if locked. Another aspect of my power is that it doesn't hurt him, he doesn't even feel it. My power drags in one cell of the X-Gene and forced all other mutant DNA strands to undo themselves while the other strands reconnected after.

[1 hour later]

Ok, the power is mine. I felt my power turn on and as soon as the hour was over I felt it turn off.

[3 hours later, Atheed household]

The actual integration of the power was much less painful than integrating rogues power. The structure of my brain shifted slightly and I was on the ground for 2 hours, but other than that I could think in different ways now. I just never really understood what language truly was until now. Math, music, art, body language, and so much more spoke to me. I could essentially talk to anyone or anything with no barriers. An unexpected upgrade also occurred, because of my first X-Gene. My intellect sped up my brain so much already I had the post-resurrection level of Cyphers powers. The thing is, Cypher saw absolutely everything as a language after his resurrection. I knew I could handle that but I couldn't stand to think like that, thankfully something I installed into Rogues powers is a sort of mental control board for new powers. I can change what aspect of my powers I wanted on. I could make It so my brain constantly translated any new and unknown spoken language as well as anything like programming, runes, and body language. I could turn off the intuitive translation of things I didn't want so I could enjoy the simpler things in life. That's exactly what I did and it worked as soon as I got a handle on the powers.

"SYNERGY this is incredible! I feel like I'm just learning how to speak. The way I see you has changed. I can make out the different objectives of each line of code like I've known the language since birth. Just imagine if I had this when I was growing up. We would've been even better off than right now. I love this. Thank you so much, because of you we were able to complete this," I was ecstatic. It wasn't even something like telekinesis but it would do so much good.

"It is an incredible achievement, you're correct sir. It was us that achieved this and now we can get started on some real work. We can make this business a real thing and no longer will we have to live in an apartment. I can get some much-needed upgrades as well," She's been badgering me about getting more materials to make her better housing and, believe me, I would love too, we just didn't have the money.

"You're right, it's time to make our dreams happen. Project web is a go"

[Oct 12th, 2008]

Creating your own company is annoying. The line waiting, signing for permits, and scouting people was a hassle. The reason I'd waited this long is for the body language aspect of my new powers. With this, I'll be able to tell who will be trustworthy and capable of helping run my company. It's funny really, your demeanor tells a lot about you, but your body paints a whole other picture. I got a small loan to start producing my products. As I said before, it was a line of laptops running my own OS. They were top of the line and maybe a year ahead of Stark tech so I knew they would sell. That is to say, Stark's tech is in late 2009 while these laptops were middle of 2010.

The main people I would distribute to is the military. Creating a name for myself on the civilian market would be difficult especially since no one's heard of me yet. Normally it would be doubly so to the military, but not for me. All I had to do was have Syn hack into their network and get me a meeting with their tech people. I called up a secretary beforehand to get her voice and then I had Syn synthesize a conversation between us stating what I wanted and who I was. This created a trail for me in case someone followed it. The secretary would probably get fired for lying and saying she didn't remember the conversation or get a raise, either way, I didn't care. The position was too low level for me to notice and if need be I'll get her a job In my company. It's a win-win situation. It was all history after that.

[Oct 20th, 2008, New York Military Base]

[an hour into the meeting]

"Sirs I believe we can all conclude that this is ahead of the times. The widow computer line not only preforms better that today's latest model but it's more durable and has a longer shelf life," I could see it. They wanted this product badly, they weren't willing to show it on their faces though. They were antsy to get their hands on it, maybe even try and reverse engineer it but they weren't advanced enough to do that yet.

"Yes well, I think I speak for all of us when we say we need time to discuss how we feel on the product. We will give you a call tomorrow Mr. Atheed. Until then, feel free to leave the product behind. We would like the run performance tests before we give you an answer."

"Ok then, thank you for your time gentlemen," I said while shaking their hands, "I can't wait for the good news." To them, I came off as confident and sure of myself. Understanding body language went both ways you see. Another good thing is that while they might think me naïve in leaving the computer behind I knew they wouldn't be able to crack it. I knew they would give me a call when their scientists couldn't figure it out. I left with a grin on my face.

[Oct 21st, 2008]

What do you know? They gave me a call the next day, 10 am sharp. I got the contract to start production and some funding for research. Now I need to set up in a respectable office building, hire some trustworthy people, and build a couple of factories. I was also able to pay back that loan for the bank. Now I didn't even need to really do anything. Syn had the computational power to scout out office buildings and the records of the buildings, run background checks on people that fit my criteria, and scout out some of the cheaper but nicer factories. The only thing I had left was to be present for the actual face to face interviews and then I had a working company named Web Industries.

If I'm correct, Tony Stark should come out as Iron Man next year and I'll have to be a bit more active with my company to keep up but for right now I can focus on gaining more power. All the more advanced schematics were already in Syn and she knew when to release them to the engineering team. Now, it was time to find Empath and Sabretooth.

Getting back home I called out, "Yo Syn, operation: defunct the evil bastards is a go."

"Finally sir, I've been waiting on that one for a while."