These were all amazing abilities. For someone like him, who had lived a shadow of a half-life for twenty-four LONG years, they were all so tantalizing. But in the end, Lucien knew he could only take one. Or could he?
 
Wasn’t the choice obvious? For all that the other powers might call to him quite strongly, there was only one of the four options that carried with it an implicit path to grabbing the other three choices. With a power as all-encompassing and far reaching as Biological Manipulation, Lucien could conceivably reach a point where he one day gave himself the other three powers.
 
He could tell that it wouldn’t be immediate, nor would it be easy… but at the same time, he had all the time in the world, didn’t he? More than that, would he really be who he was if he didn’t shoot for the moon? Death’s final words to him ring in his head as he reaches for his choice. Perhaps in another thousand years…
 
The understanding that he would likely live that long was nice, but at the same time Lucien couldn’t help being rather impatient. He didn’t want to wait a thousand years to make Death cum. Was that a silly thing to think? Maybe, but he knew one thing for certain… he was going to do everything in his power to get to the point where he could make Death of the Endless, a Primordial Force of the Universe itself… orgasm.
 
Heh, he certainly didn’t settle for small potatoes, did he? In that way, he was very much his father’s son. ‘Reaching’ for the power of Biological Manipulation with both hands, Lucien grasps it firmly and pulls it to his chest, hugging it in a way until it absorbs into him. It becomes a part of him in that moment, and the young man shudders… before opening his eyes.
 
It’s a strange sensation, because as far as he was concerned, his eyes were already open. But now they open again, and he takes in a deeper breath than he’d ever known possible as he immediately sits up in bed.
 
He’s instantly aware of being alive again. Looking around himself, he sees his old bedroom in the small but also quite expensive apartment that he’d lived in before his father, Lex Luthor, disowned him at the age of eighteen. Which meant he was no longer twenty-four. He was younger than eighteen. He was… how old was he?
 
Lucien is just about to rise from the bed and check when he’s caught off guard by his senses flaring with activity. As his new power settles in, the young man lets out a low breath, able to feel… everything about his body. It’s just as Death had said, thankfully. He has come back in time, but his body does not feel nearly as frail and sickly as it once did. Whatever energy his true nature had been robbing from him his entire life, it had finally stopped.
 
On top of that, he now knew exactly how old he was. Sixteen Years, Zero Months, Zero Days, Fifty-One Minutes, Thirty Seconds, and Twenty-Eight Milliseconds. Though admittedly, those last two lasted barely half a beat before changing on him. He truly was back in time. His surroundings had been evidence enough but this? This was confirmation. He was back on the morning of his Sixteenth Birthday exactly.
 
That said, just because his true nature was no longer crippling his physical body… did not mean Lucien was in any way in good health. Rather, he can breath clearly and there’s not as much pain when he moves about, but his frailty is not truly cured. There’s a weakness to him that Lucien knows on an intellectual level is just… bad.
 
This body has lived sixteen years without the energy it needs to properly grow and thrive, after all. In fact, so has his brain for that matter. He can already feel a headache starting to form, the overuse of his grey matter really starting to get to him. He needed… he needed a template, that’s what he needed.
 
It was as he’d thought, after all. His new power had the greatest potential of the four options, save for MAYBE energy manipulation. He could, with the right amount time and resources, possibly replicate the other options. However, he needed knowledge he didn’t currently have. He couldn’t make himself Kryptonian when he hadn’t ever actually SEEN a Kryptonian’s physiology with his power before. Nor could he give himself the ability to control energy or the ability to adapt to danger and harm without seeing examples of those as well in another’s biology.
 
But more than that… he couldn’t even begin to strengthen his body without a proper template. His own template was irreparably flawed, after all. Looking internally at himself, Lucien could see how weak he was. He knew on an intellectual level that his bones shouldn’t be so flimsy, nor his lungs so small and underdeveloped. But he didn’t know what they were actually supposed to look like yet to bring them up to par with a normal human being.
 
Letting out a low shallow breath, reveling in the lack of pain but also acknowledging that he was already starting to feel lightheaded from the inability to suck in enough oxygen, Lucien grimaces. He needs… a template first and foremost. He needs to find someone, preferably a man, so that he can get an idea of what they and thus he is actually supposed to look like on the inside. He needs-
 
His phone suddenly ringing causes Lucien to blink and look at his nightstand. When he reaches for it, he winces in anticipation of a spike of pain that never comes. Now, there’s only mild discomfort as he leans over to grab the phone and bring the screen to his face. He blinks at seeing a familiar name gracing the Caller ID. A name he hasn’t seen in over four years.
 
Slowly, Lucien reaches out and presses the Answer Button, almost unable to believe it.
 
“M-Mercy?”
 
The voice of Mercy Graves comes through on the other end, not quite warm, decidedly professional… and yet, far kinder than any tone his father had every taken with him.
 
“I’m outside, Lucien. Do you need my help getting to the car?”
 
Lucien blinks slowly, taking a moment to catch up. But then he does and he curses under his breath as he remembers what each of his birthdays was like up until the age of eighteen. Until that time, until the point where his father disowned him and threw him aside, Lucien had spent every single birthday going through a battery of tests designed by Lex Luthor himself. They’d been a grueling, torturous affair, especially for someone in his condition. And of course, every single year, he’d failed miserably.
 
That was how the first eighteen birthdays of his life had gone. Frankly, he could hardly believe he’d forgotten. Then again, it had been six years. Six birthdays where that didn’t happen. And now here he was, eight years back in time, with three more of those excruciating experiences to look forward to. Except… except this time was different, wasn’t it?
 
“Lucien? Tell me you didn’t forget what day it was. How is that even possible?”
 
Lucien’s heart begins to beat faster in his chest, even as Mercy’s incredulity carries over the call.
 
“N-No… I mean, um… yes. Yes, I do need your help getting to the car.”
 
“… Alright, I’ll be right in.”
 
Luckily, past-him had been smart and dressed for going out before bed. Considering getting dressed could be particularly grueling in his past life, doing it before bed so that his sickly body could then spend the entire night recovering was just common sense. As such, by the time Mercy makes it to his apartment door, he actually is ready to go.
 
Mercy Graves. Blonde and beautiful, she was Lex Luthor’s right hand woman. To the uninitiated and ignorant, she might just be seen as Lex Luthor’s driver, and in some cases, his bodyguard. But she was so much more than that, and Lucien knew that better than most. She was his father’s operative in every sense of the word, one of the finer tools in Lex Luthor’s massive arsenal.
 
She was also Lucien’s best bet to getting ahead of the game, so to speak. As he leans against the doorway, Mercy offers him her arm… which he gladly takes, intertwining his fingers with hers in the process and making a show of anchoring himself to her. He’s not nearly as sickly as he used to be, and so he has to act a little bit to make it seem like he actually needs her help, but if Mercy notices, she doesn’t say a word.
 
He's still Lex’s son for the time being after all. Disappointment though he might be.
 
… Truth be told, being disowned by his father had hurt a lot less than being abandoned by Mercy, back in the past that was also his future. Even knowing that turning eighteen meant Lex was kicking him to the curb, Lucien hadn’t quite realized what that would mean for his and Mercy’s relationship.
 
It wasn’t like their ‘relationship’ had ever been anything more than employer’s son and father’s employee, to be fair. But Mercy had been the closest thing he had to a mother… closer, anyways, than Lex had ever gotten to being an actual father.
 
Regardless, with a single touch of Mercy’s hand, Lucien has a map of every single bit of her biology. He could even do whatever he wanted to her in this moment. She was completely at his mercy, not that she knew it. The problem was, Lucien was still incredibly new to these powers. Any change he DID try to make to Mercy would likely end up distorted or just plain wrong.
 
Instead, he uses what he can of her biology to start making improvements to his own, even as they make their way to the car. Not all of it is usable, of course. But luckily his power lets him look at his own body versus hers and know what’s interchangeable between sexes and what isn’t. Seeing as Lucien has no desire to turn himself into a woman, he’s very careful to only use what he can. He still needs the blueprints of a man to fix up the rest of himself.
 
Of course, even as he does what he can and his health already starts to dramatically improve, Lucien considers just what he’s going to show Lex. Getting into the back of the car with Mercy’s help, securing his seat belt, Lucien sits back and lets his eyes drift shut, falling into a slightly meditative state.
 
He wants to impress his father. There’s no doubt about that. He wants to make Lex Luthor proud of him for once. Even after everything the other man has done to him, Lucien wants to break the mold. He wants to overcome the massive disappointment he’s always presented as and show himself to be what he always could have been.
 
That said, he recognizes that his father is a dangerous, cut-throat man. Lex Luthor did not get where he is in life by being particularly kind… to anyone, even his own family. That he’d been willing to tolerate Lucien’s existence might have meant that the man had a heart somewhere buried inside his chest… but it also could have just meant Lex considered a living Lucien to be less of a skeleton in his closet than a dead Lucien.
 
In the end, Lucien wasn’t going to go back to the way things were. He knew that for a fact. He couldn’t pretend to be so frail and sickly that his father ignored him for another year. He’d already ruined that possibility after all. The battery of tests he was about to go through would reveal the changes he’d already begun to make to himself. And even if it didn’t, he was sure the absence of the energy drain he’d been suffering all his life would be clear, even if the energy drain itself had always gone undetected.
 
Put simply, unless he wanted to make Mercy pullover and let him out here and now so he could go on the run... there was no helping things. He was going to be exposed. It was just a matter of what form that exposure would take.
 
“We’re here.”
 
Mercy’s voice cuts through Lucien’s thoughts, causing him to blink in surprise. He hadn’t realized how long he’d been in his own head for. Time really did pass more smoothly when you weren’t in constant pain just from existing, didn’t it?
 
“Ready?”
 
Meeting Mercy’s eyes through the rearview mirror, Lucien presses his lips tightly together and nods.
 
“As I’ll ever be.”
 
-x-X-x-
 
The first couple of hours are the yearly Physical. Of course, comparing the Physical Exam that Lucien is put through to the Physical Exam that doctors give hundreds of millions of patients every year would be like comparing Lex Luthor to any other CEO of a Fortune Five Hundred Company. They’re just not the same thing, which is why Lucien’s Physical takes two hours.
 
He does make a point of getting in a handshake with one of the doctor’s giving the Physical right at the start though. With a template of a proper human male, Lucien is able to begin repairing the rest of his body. Slowly, of course. He doesn’t have the biomass to make fast changes, but he CAN get everything under way.
 
Of course, he knows what that will look like. He knows it will show up in his tests. A regenerative factor, he has no doubts they’ll call it.
 
As he’s finally led into a room where his father waits for him, Lucien straightens up, knowing he’s gotten the man’s attention. Lex Luthor hadn’t personally attended one of his birthdays since Lucien was ten. That the man had seen fit to show up today was a sign that he’d already changed things. After all, this didn’t happen the first time around.
 
“Father.”
 
Lex’s eyes flash, the bald man looking down his nose at Lucien. Then, he smiles. It’s not a nice smile though, and it does not fill Lucien with any sense of warmth or happiness.
 
“Lucien. Shall we get started?”
 
Just like his father not to confront him. Lucien couldn’t help but wonder what Lex thought of him. Did the Physical alone have Lex convinced that he was suddenly going to be worth something? Or perhaps his father thought he was an imposter. In a way, Lucien was an imposter. Still, he was in too far to back out now.
 
Looking from Lex to the other things in the room, Lucien slowly nods. There’s a table and on it is a sheaf of papers almost big enough to count for an unbound book. A mental test that he’ll be expected to fail. The rest of the room is big enough to house an entire gymnasium… the physical portion of the test.
 
He considers it all for a moment… before sitting down at the table and getting to work.