Dr.Henry McCoy was in his lab, as usual, messing around with an interesting compound someone had picked up during their last mission to the Savage Land. The initial findings were quite promising -- at first glance, it looked like the stuff was responsible for the noted gigantism that most of the flora and fauna had demonstrated there. Just to be sure, he had diluted a bit of it into a plant's food some weeks ago, and the effects were astonishing. Compared to the normal growth rate of its species, the plant was expanding over 200% faster. An injection into one of his lab rats (he named him "Mickey") was similarly surprising. The rat grew over five times the size of his littermates in the span of a few days.

He wasn't quite sure what the ramifications for this was, and he was a long way from determining the effect on human physiology -- or mutant, for that matter. Nonetheless, it was quite exciting work, a welcome respite from the long list of threats to mutantkind or emergency situations he found himself occupied with.

After carefully mapping its genetic make-up, cataloguing its properties and making sure that his initial test results were duplicated and explained, he felt ready to take his research to the next level. And, since it was highly unlikely he would get funding from a government agency, educational institution or foreign power, he would have to be ready to blaze the scientific trail himself.

He made sure that the serum he made from the compound was diluted enough. He was already quite a large man; at over six feet and four hundred pounds of hulking feline might, he was nothing to sneeze at. He wasn't the biggest or heaviest mutant on the team, but it was safe to say he was larger than average. A few more inches, a couple dozen more pounds, would hardly be noticed, he was sure.

Making sure he had the right amount of serum was more difficult than he thought it would be. The brutish paws he acquired during his last mutation made the delicate work science often demanded of him a bit of a chore. Still, he thought he had extracted little enough (merely 10 ccs of the stuff) that his growth would be measurable, but not overwhelming.

The enormous blue cat-like mutant rolled up the sleeve of his lab coat, parted some of his fur to find a vein, and pressed the tip of the needle against it. "Well, Henry," he chuckled to himself. "One small prick for mutants, one giant leap for mutantkind." He pressed in the needle's plunger and sank in the serum. There was a bit of warmth as it entered his bloodstream, but little more than that.

He sat down in front of his computer and began working on a particularly challenging physics problem he had hoped to crack a few weeks ago, letting the chair underneath him creak in protest under his weight. "Now we play the waiting game."