Bear with me….

Picture it: Utopia is hosting a baseball game: Hope and the Five Lights vs. and a six-man team made up of the New X-men students with Havok and X-Man acting as overseers. Naturally, spats must be broken up between the two teams when suddenly, in a freak occurrence, the Hulk teleports onto the floating island.

Havok, in an effort to spare Hope from the frightening prospect of taking on the Hulk, latches onto the Green Giant and commences to absorb the radiation from his body. Reaching his capacity in almost a full minute, Havok pushes himself, valiantly disregarding a progressively ailing body and the urge to quit; after the passing of two minutes, and reducing the Hulk’s muscle mass by an inch, Havok releases a massive plasma blast, sending the behemoth deep into the Pacific Ocean with Namor claiming witness to his fall.

Despite his considerable victory, Havok, even after bleeding off a portion of the absorbed radiation, finds he cannot expel the remaining energy due to both fear of collateral damage and accidental death and difficulty on his own part; it’s incredibly painful to store such an exorbitant amount of energy, let alone eject it from one’s body.    

Openly questioning his inability to handle the power (see Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire, when Havok, upon being flung into a star, absorbs enough energy to burn Vulcan’s face), agonized tears stream down the radiation-powered mutant’s face.

Hope, struck with guilt and shock, locks eyes with Havok before the Phoenix Force envelops her being. X-Man, seemingly affected by the two events, throws his hands in the air as a surge of his former powers courses through his body.   

An amber glow coats Havok in a painful aura; in a flash, his body explodes.

The hands of an anguished X-Man point towards the explosion, manipulating the energies at the site of incident.

The scene cuts away to space. We find the Silver Surfer pontificating when a crackling burst of energy materializes before him. After a moment of building tension, Havok appears from the energy-cloud, clothed in a shimmering, white version of his costume.

After a meet-and-greet:

Havok: …….Hi.

Silver Surfer: Hello, traveler. You may call me Norrin.

Havok: Um, my name is Alex.

And getting to know each other:

Norrin: What is your trade, Alex?

Havok: Trade? I… I have my Master’s Degree in geophysics.

Silver Surfer: Fascinating. In another life, I was once an astronomer. It is interesting to think about the implications our former lives have had on our current state.

The Silver Surfer shares the mysteries of the universe with our incorporeal hero.

Meanwhile, back on Utopia, X-Man frantically speaks in what seems like hundreds of languages at once, inducing seizures in the young heroes present in the vicinity aside from Hope. Rockslide, notably, disassembles and resembles at an alarming rate, causing his rocky limbs to slowly crumble.

After fifteen minutes and the arrival of the entire X-Men, latent energies in the area begin to react wildly. The Utopians brace themselves for an implosion, shielding the seizing students and otherwise incapacitated X-Man and Hope.   A blinding flash of light quickly leads to the appearance of Havok, clothed in the same costume worn before his “death”.

After an extensive examination, the X-Club find nothing wrong with Hope or Havok, but note the full return of X-Man’s powers. Nevertheless, the science community on Utopia speculates on the possible effects the ordeal with have on Havok.

Weeks pass, and Havok realizes he possesses knowledge that he shouldn’t have otherwise. He knows when Iceman has transformed into vapor form when the latter is considered missing, he can recall glimpses of Wolverine’s childhood, and he has insight into Hope’s existence (and more on that later…..). People Havok lays eyes on appear as incarnations from different timelines, while Hope sometimes looks and speaks just like Jean Grey.     

Finally, Cyclops, making his return to the X-fold (after the currently unfolding Schism), takes a plasma wave from Havok to the chest. Expecting to merely absorb the attack, Cyclops experiences multiple versions of himself from different timelines, putting him in a coma.

Realizing the seriousness of the issue, Beast calls Hank Pym and Reed Richards to Utopia to examine Havok, who draw this conclusion:  

Havok, after absorbing the mass amounts of radiation from the Hulk, was merely set to explode when Hope instinctually activated the full extent of X-Man’s powers. X-Man, who has spent time as an omniscient being of pure energy, unknowingly tried to anchor his cross-dimensional uncle to this plane of existence. However, due to the shock of a sudden increase in power, Havok is instead tied to the nearest cosmically-aware person: the Silver Surfer.  After his little odyssey, Havok now possesses a minor form of cosmic awareness, explaining his visions and increased intuition. This also explains why Cyclops was so greatly affected by Havok’s plasma blast; due to their shared heritage and immunity to each other’s powers, Cyclops, upon being struck with a plasma blast, is instead “gifted” with glimpses into his condition across the multiverse.    

The revelation of his newfound talent has major consequences for Havok:

1)       If he were to kill someone, Havok would be privy to their possible life untouched by their then death. He would also envision the lives of their progeny.

2)       He starts to question the purpose of his mission in tandem to his newfound insight (his attitude towards certain practices of Cyclop’s administration, namely X-Force and the hoarding of Quentin Quire, for example).  

3)       The decision to separate the mutant community from the rest of the world.

I thought of this after reading Plato’s Symposium, books by Eckhart Tolle, as well as articles about Five Percenterism. The common theme shared through each work is the notion that all are connected through a supreme Being, an entity that resides in each being (your inner Jesus, your inner Buddha, your Atman, etc.)… well, not so much in the first work, but there is a relation. In Symposium, Socrates, during his speech on Love (the demigod) and the love (the emotion), explained that the desire to start a family is divinely inspired by the creative need to be immortal. In other words, if one can’t live forever on his or her own, why not live on through children?   This theory ties into the Five Percenter tenet of each person being a part of God, Oneness, which is also echoed in the works of Eckhart Tolle. If humanity is one consciousness, then why do humans fight one another?  

Why did I choose Havok?

• 1) In his first appearance, he was described as an extensive battery for cosmic energy, a trait I found highly useful.
• 2) Havok was the X-Man to tell reporters (and by extension the world) that certain mutants wouldn’t be so hostile if they weren’t on the receiving end of such hostility themselves. I wondered what would happen if the person who uttered that statement was cosmically attuned to life on Earth.
• 3) Since mutants, mutates, and normal humans are essentially one race, it would be interesting to depict a mutant forced to ignore his anger, resentment, and fear in order to look at the bigger picture, whatever that means.  
• 4) Cyclops and Havok have an interesting dynamic between them. Cyclops was a pious, uptight nerd who experienced a crisis of faith, later loosening up to the point of developing a brash leadership style. Ironically, it was his newfound aggressiveness that alienated many of his closest allies. Havok, on the other hand, debuted as the hot-tempered, angst-ridden brother to the leader of the X-Men; eventually maturing from his time with X-Factor and the Starjammers, Havok is once again forced to disregard political correctness and conventional wisdom in favor of his cosmic insight.

And that’s all I have so far. Critique as you will.