A Perfectly Reasonable Plan of Action

This is a Commissioned Story

Year Two of Krakoa, Late Summer
The Carousel, Krakoa
23:38 Local Time

The Carousel, Krakoa’s sprawling communal heart, was loud tonight.

Below the terrace, bioluminescent pathways wound between living treehouses, hanging gardens, and broad festival clearings crowded with bonfires. Mutants drifted from balconies and leafy dwellings toward music, wine, and the shameless heat of a nation that had decided survival deserved a party. In one secluded booth beneath a curtain of broad leaves, several naked bodies writhed together in a tangle of limbs, sweat, and open-mouthed pleasure, mostly hidden from the passing crowd. The air lay wet against Jean’s skin, thick with jungle humidity, spilled liquor, woodsmoke, and the salt of bodies emerging from the lagoon. Somewhere beyond the suspended walkways, a crowd cheered as mutant lights burst above the central bonfire, sending a flock of bright-winged insects fleeing through the trees.

Jean should have been down among them.

Instead, she paced the length of Emma Frost’s private terrace, her bare feet striking white marble that had no business remaining cold in the tropical air. She wore a green halter dress better suited to the revelry below, its neckline plunging almost to her waist and leaving a broad, creamy expanse of cleavage exposed between her heavy breasts. The thin fabric cinched around her narrow middle before flowing over her wide hips and the soft, full curve of her ass, though the humidity had made it cling beneath her breasts and along the backs of her thighs. Her deep red hair had escaped its pins and fallen into damp waves around her shoulders, and she kept pushing it away from her face with increasingly impatient fingers.

Emma watched from a pale chaise beneath a canopy of flowering vines.

Her white dress appeared to have been designed around the premise that modesty was a character flaw. A rigid, jewel-bright collar framed her throat, while the bodice plunged into a narrow point between breasts so enormous, high, and perfectly rounded that they had the sculpted look of extravagant implants despite being entirely natural. Where Jean’s breasts were lush and weighty, soft enough to settle and shift with every movement, Emma’s stood proudly from her chest in two firm globes, their upper curves displayed almost to the nipples by the gleaming white fabric. The dress fitted like poured silk around her small waist, then opened along one hip to expose a long, smooth leg all the way to the upper thigh.

One ankle rested over the opposite knee. A crystal glass hung between two manicured fingers. Her pale blond hair fell in immaculate waves around a face composed into elegant amusement.

Even in the sweltering heat, Emma looked refrigerated by privilege and an offended refusal to perspire.

“You came to me instead of going back to your husband,” Emma said, turning the glass just enough to make the liquor climb its inner wall. Her blue eyes followed Jean’s pacing, occasionally dipping to the agitated rise of her jiggling cleavage with clinical interest. “So either Scott has done something catastrophically stupid, or he has done exactly what he always does and you have finally lost your mind.”

Jean stopped near the railing. Her fingers closed around the smooth marble edge hard enough that a faint tremor passed through the stone. The movement pressed her breasts together inside the deep neckline, drawing Emma’s attention for another brief, unapologetic glance.
Below, two laughing mutants chased each other through a curtain of hanging blossoms, both naked from the waist up. Jean looked away.

“I’ve talked to him. I’ve tried being direct.” Her breasts rose beneath the halter as she dragged in a breath. “I’ve told him in bed. I’ve told him over breakfast. I tell him exactly what I want, and he treats it like a tactical objective.”

"He approaches sex like a military deployment," Emma noted, lifting the glass to her lips. "Color me shocked."

Jean’s jaw tightened. She resumed pacing, her arms crossing tightly under her chest. "He listens, Emma. That’s the problem. If I say I want it harder, he goes harder right up until he feels my body tense, and then he immediately backs off because he thinks he’s hurting me. If I tell him not to slow down, he starts monitoring my breathing. He makes me come. He gets me there every single time, and then he literally powers down and looks at me like the mission was a success."

Emma leaned back, her pale throat lifting slightly, her eyes narrowing as she picked apart the localized telepathic static rolling off Jean's shoulders. "Orgasm achieved. Partner unharmed. Husbandly duty executed perfectly. He satisfies the measurable requirements."

Jean’s hand snapped outward, and a loose vine beside the terrace violently twisted around itself before she caught her temper and released it. "Stop making him sound like a robot."

"He isn't a robot, darling, he's just terrified of himself," Emma said, rising from the chaise. The slit of her dress opened along one thigh as she crossed the terrace, her heels completely silent against the marble. "Scott has spent thirty years believing that if he stops controlling every single muscle in his body, someone dies. You ask him to let go in bed, and his brain hears, 'Take off your visor and level the building.'"

Jean looked down at the party again. A woman with blue skin had climbed onto a table and was pouring wine into the open mouth of a laughing young man below her. Krakoa’s night was swollen with permission, packed with people who had escaped persecution and finally found a home and now treated every appetite like a mandate. Jean’s fingers dug into her own arms. "That’s exactly why I don’t want to force him. I want him to realize he's allowed to just want things."

Emma came to stand beside her at the railing, smelling of expensive, icy perfume and citrus. "And how many years have you been waiting for Scott Summers to choose being selfish?"

Jean’s shoulders shifted. "That isn’t fair."

"No, it's reality," Emma countered, her voice dropping its amused cadence for something much blunter. "Fairness is what he gives you every night while you lie underneath him, wanting to be taken apart by a man who treats your sex drive like a hazard he has to manage."

Jean turned on her, the terrace lights dimming as her telekinesis violently stirred the air. "Watch it, Emma."

Emma held her gaze, entirely still except for the small movement of her thumb along her glass. "There's the anger. Hold onto that."

The words struck low in Jean's gut. Her breath caught, and for a split second, she was back under Scott in the Earthlight, his muscular chest over hers, his hips finally starting to lose their measured rhythm before he inevitably caught himself and softened the pace. Her body remembered the heavy, frustrating pressure of it. The exact moment he put his control back on. It had left her staring past his shoulder, completely sated and still wanting to scream.

Emma watched the memory cross Jean's face and didn't bother asking for permission to read it. "Scott’s restraint isn't a virtue anymore, Jean. It’s trauma. And if you leave it alone, it’s going to break somewhere ugly. Men like him don’t just relax into desire. They starve it, or it comes back and bites them."

Jean swallowed hard. "So what am I supposed to do? Keep begging? Throw myself at him until he files a report about it?"

"No," Emma said, setting her glass on the railing with a sharp click. "If his mind refuses to adapt, we just change the body."

For several seconds, Jean did not move. The party continued below, all heat and heavy bass, but the terrace seemed to drop ten degrees. Emma’s glass shattered.

It didn't fall. It burst outward in a bright, violent spray of crystal and liquor, the fragments hanging suspended in midair for a fraction of a second before raining aggressively across the marble. Emma looked at the mess, then at Jean, with one eyebrow rising in delicate reproach.

Jean’s hands had curled into tight fists. "No."

Emma stepped around the broken glass. "That was Lalique."

"I don't care. No." Jean’s voice had dropped to a dangerous whisper, the vines behind her straining away from the wall as the telekinetic pressure spiked. "You are talking about altering his body without his consent. You want to manipulate the Five to drug my husband because I’m frustrated in bed. Listen to yourself."

"I am not talking about mind control, Jean, so put the telekinesis away and listen to me." Emma moved to a small side table, selected another glass, and poured herself a replacement drink with an insulting level of calm. "The Five grow the body, but they aren't architects. They are an assembly line. Tempus ages the husk, Elixir shapes the biomass, and Hope synergizes the circuit, but they rely completely on the Cerebro template we feed them to know what they are building."

"And Hope checks that template every single time," Jean snapped. "She would notice if you changed his baseline."

"Hope would see what I allowed her to see," Emma corrected smoothly, taking a measured sip. "They are teenagers and zealots running a miracle factory, Jean. They are exhausted. I don't need to overwrite their minds. I just slide a localized telepathic suggestion into the Hatchery. I push on Elixir's subconscious desire to heal, convincing him that Scott's body requires a fortified baseline to survive his constant battlefield trauma. I cloud Hope's perception for thirty seconds while the egg gestates. I slip a few medical refinements into the blueprint, and they build it assuming Krakoa is simply optimizing its captain."

Jean’s breathing had slowed, but she kept her arms folded tightly beneath her breasts. "What kind of refinements?"

“Medical optimizations,” Emma said, pacing just beyond the glistening puddle of spilled liquor. “Scott dies… consistently. The next time he comes back, we make sure the Five give him heightened nerve density for better recovery. Expanded circulation for combat endurance. Hormones adjusted to manage stress. We frame it entirely as routine maintenance.”

Jean stared at her. Since Krakoa had made death temporary, Scott had grown even more willing to spend his life like ammunition, certain the Five would simply hand it back. Jean had never stopped hating how easily that certainty let him die.

Emma’s mouth softened into a sharp, knowing smile. “Keep up, darling. Substantially increased blood flow and nerve density can do considerably more than help him on the battlefield.”

She did not need to say more.

The space between their minds had already changed. Beneath Emma’s immaculate clinical phrasing, Jean felt the real proposal take shape in impressions too intimate for language: Scott’s body reacting before discipline could intervene, desire moving through him faster than thought, restraint losing its effortless command over flesh. Emma offered no explicit image, yet Jean’s own imagination completed it at once, placing Scott naked in their bedroom, larger, hotter, and unable to conceal every physical response behind duty.

Emma felt Jean understand.

Jean felt Emma notice.

Neither woman acknowledged the exchange aloud.

Jean turned toward the jungle because looking directly at Emma would have made the silent agreement visible. The medical language was camouflage, and both telepaths knew exactly what crouched beneath it.

A wave of clean, rational guilt surged through Jean’s chest. This was wrong. It was a profound, unforgivable violation. She was considering manipulating the Five and permanently altering her husband’s body without his knowledge. She opened her mouth to say so, to end the conversation before either of them could make the unspoken proposal real.

And then the guilt vanished.

It didn't fade. It was swallowed whole, dropping out from beneath her like a trapdoor. What rushed into the empty space was a wet, pulsing anticipation so violent that her thighs clamped together before she could stop them. The drums from the party below seemed to strike directly against her pelvis. The smell of sweat and crushed flowers thickened until she had to breathe through her mouth. Her nipples hardened sharply against the silk of her dress, and the memory of Scott inside her returned with vicious, demanding clarity.

Emma saw the physical shift. Her gaze dropped to the minute tightening of Jean’s hips, then rose again without comment. "We aren't making him someone else," Emma said, her tone dropping into something much quieter. "We're just making his body less obedient to his fear."

Jean pressed one palm against the railing. The marble was cold and slick where the liquor had spilled. She searched deliberately for her moral outrage, reaching for it like a familiar weapon in the dark. It wasn't there. Instead, her brain rapidly paved over the missing guilt with flawless justification. Scott is exhausted. Scott carries too much weight. He deserves a body that doesn't treat sex like a warzone. He deserves release. I deserve the man I love.

Her voice came out far steadier than her body felt. "He would notice."

"Maybe eventually," Emma conceded, tilting her head. "But we start small. A slightly faster recovery profile. A baseline libido that doesn't wait for permission from mission command. And frankly, with the proportional circulatory changes, he'll just assume it's a side effect of his new body settling.”

"He trusts me," Jean said. Her hand slid from the railing to her stomach, her fingers pressing into the fabric.

"He trusts both of us," Emma answered.

The honesty made it real. Jean pictured Scott stepping out of the gold resurrection egg, naked, wet, and disoriented. She pictured Emma standing in the shadows of the Hatchery, quietly manipulating Elixir and Hope while Jean pressed her mind against Scott's to anchor his soul. She would know, before he did, that his body had been permanently improved. The word slid into her mind with obscene, horrifying ease. Improved.

"If the Five catch you..." Jean started.

"They won't," Emma replied smoothly. "I have been manipulating far more complicated rooms than a damp cave full of glowing teenagers. Giving Krakoa's primary field commander a physiological tune-up isn't going to raise any alarms if the telepathic nudges are applied correctly."

Jean finally looked at her. Emma’s face was composed, but her fingers were tight around her glass. She knew exactly what kind of fire they were playing with.

Below them, the crowd roared as someone ignited a ring of mutant flame over the lagoon. Orange light flickered up through the leaves, moving across Emma’s white dress, Jean’s green one, and the shattered glass between them. Jean’s body answered the sound with a low, heavy throb.

She closed her eyes and tried one last time to find the woman who would have broken Emma's jaw for suggesting this. She wasn't there.

When Jean opened her eyes, Emma was waiting.

"Small," Jean said, her voice carrying the rough, breathy edge of a woman giving in. "Nothing that writes over his mind. His choices remain his."

Emma inclined her head. "His choices remain his."

"No one else knows."

"Obviously."

Jean nodded once. The click of the decision seemed to travel down her spine and settle heavily between her legs. She hated how wet she was. She hated that she didn't care.

"The next time he dies," Jean said, staring out at the dark jungle, "you show me the exact blueprint before you feed it to the Five."

Emma’s smile returned, faint and entirely victorious. "Of course."

Jean didn't turn around, but she listened to the sound of Emma lifting her fresh glass in the humid air.

"To medical optimization," Emma said, the ice striking the crystal. "To Scott."

Over the next twelve months, Scott Summers died seven times.

Krakoa had made death temporary, and Scott had responded to that miracle in the most predictable way possible. He still calculated risks, still searched for alternatives, still refused to throw lives away for spectacle, but the old finality had been removed from his decisions. If someone had to remain behind, he knew exactly whose name belonged at the top of the list. The Five would grow him again. Cerebro would restore him. Jean would be waiting when he returned.

The first death came above the North Pacific, when Scott held an Orchis reactor chamber long enough for Magik to evacuate the mutants imprisoned beneath it. The platform ruptured around him, burning through steel before the wreckage dropped into three miles of black water.

When he returned, his new body felt stronger than the one he had lost. His shoulders carried more breadth, his chest had filled out, and the muscles through his abdomen and legs seemed denser beneath the skin. Jean admired the result with a concentration Scott found flattering, though her attention occasionally lingered below his waist.

He noticed her expression more than the changes that produced it.

Whenever a comparison began to form, something warm moved through his thoughts. The new body felt right. Resurrection was improving. The Five refined their work every day, and Scott had more important things to consider than whether his uniform sat differently across his hips.

The second death came in Marseille. XENO spores entered his lungs and began building pale organs inside his bloodstream while he directed civilians toward the Krakoan gate. He remained upright until the last prisoner crossed, then folded against the living arch as rigid growths pushed beneath the skin of his abdomen.

The next body was larger again, not dramatically in any single measurement, but everywhere at once. His back pulled more tightly against old shirts. His arms filled his sleeves. His thighs strained the seams of uniforms tailored for a leaner man. His cock hung thicker when soft, and his balls felt fuller against the narrow pouch of his underwear.

Scott replaced several sets of clothing and blamed inconsistent Krakoan tailoring.

After the third death, a Brood queen’s tail driven through his ribs, the changes became harder to conceal. The new Scott had the same proportions, the same face, the same disciplined bearing, but the body beneath those familiar markers had become a more forceful version of itself. Muscle sat more heavily across his chest and shoulders. His waist remained narrow, emphasizing the broader structure above it and the solid hips below. Even at rest, he looked built for impact.

His genitals had grown with him.

Alex made one remark about Scott’s new uniform requiring “strategic reinforcement.” Scott looked down at the pronounced shape beneath the blue fabric, felt the beginning of a question, and then Jean’s fingers touched his wrist.

The question lost its edge.

The fourth death was cleaner. A Nimrod removed his head on Krakoa’s western shore while Scott kept the machine facing him instead of the crowded habitat behind him. Jean caught what remained before it struck the sand.

When he returned, his body carried a new sexual restlessness. Arousal arrived faster, settled deeper, and resisted the ordinary discipline with which he had always contained it. He woke hard more often. Jean could make him erect with a look across the room, and the response sometimes began before Scott consciously understood what she wanted.

He treated it as intimacy.

Jean treated it as progress.

The fifth death left him frozen in vacuum after a Shi’ar refugee transport ruptured near the edge of the solar system. Scott used repeated optic blasts to push the crippled vessel toward rescue, but the compartment holding him tore free and spun into darkness.

His fifth body was more powerful still. The muscles of his back shifted beneath the skin with each movement, his chest had become thick enough to make older uniforms impossible, and his hands seemed larger when they closed around Jean’s hips. His cock gained more length and girth, while his balls hung lower and produced an ache that returned quickly after sex.

Scott began wanting Jean twice in a night.

Then three times.

The satisfaction after orgasm no longer arrived as a clean ending. His body rested briefly, gathered itself, and wanted again. He could restrain the urge, but doing so required effort that had never been necessary before.

The sixth death came beneath Manhattan. Scott held an unstable gate open while hundreds escaped a collapsing station, then vanished under concrete, twisted rail, and fire. The body grown afterward possessed a physical presence that even Logan regarded with narrowed eyes.

Scott assumed Logan was assessing a rival.

Jean knew he was appreciating the result.

By then, Scott’s cock had become impossible to dismiss as ordinary. It pushed visibly against every uniform the moment arousal stirred, and once hard it remained so with stubborn persistence. His sexual appetite began surfacing at inconvenient times, intruding during strategy meetings, meals, and quiet conversations whenever Jean’s thoughts brushed against his own.

He responded with colder showers, harder training, and tighter control.

The body answered by becoming more insistent.

The seventh death came during the hardest assault Krakoa faced that year. Orchis struck through six gates while XENO mercenaries attacked from within, and a fusion weapon was buried beneath the island’s western root system. Scott opened a gate beneath it and forced the device through with a sustained optic blast while the living roots closed around his legs.

The weapon detonated between dimensions.

Nothing recognizable returned.

The seventh body emerged from the resurrection egg as the culmination of every previous change. Scott was taller by only a fraction, yet the breadth of his shoulders and the dense mass across his chest made him seem larger. His arms, back, hips, and thighs carried more muscle than they ever had before, turning the controlled athleticism of his old body into something unmistakably brawny. Even relaxed, he looked capable of driving through a wall and continuing onward without breaking stride.

His cock and balls had grown in the same broad, unrestrained fashion.

Jean saw him through the membrane and forgot to breathe.

When she placed his mind inside the body, something beneath his conscious thoughts opened with him.

It carried no name. It understood pressure, attention, hunger, and use. It knew Jean through Scott’s memories and recognized the pleasure she associated with his loss of restraint. It understood that Scott’s first response to every desire was discipline.

Then it learned that discipline could be overcome.