Charles Xavier didn’t believe that claim, but he did believe in her sincerity and goodwill, so he nodded and confirmed her guess.
“Ms. Angela, my legs truly can no longer support me because of an injury. I’ve been to many hospitals as well; the nerve damage is severe, and I think you understand what that means.”
Under the common understanding of the twentieth century, many kinds of cells in the human body could regenerate, but nerve cells could not—which was why nerve damage so easily led to permanent loss of function.
In the mid-to-late twenty-first century, however, many medical concepts were overturned.
Angela boldly stood up, drew her Caduceus Staff, and pointed it at the man before her.
“I understand very well what you’re saying, but I hope you can also take in the latest advances in nanotechnology.”
Angela selected her target, “Charles Xavier,” pressed the button on the Caduceus Staff with her right thumb, and used the ability “heal.” Golden points of light gathered into a beam and flowed toward Charles Xavier’s body.
The tolerant, enduring mutant paid it no mind at first, but as time passed his expression changed.
In disbelief, he reached out to touch the legs that had long since lost all sensation—and a jolt like an electric current ran straight to his brain.
Charles Xavier pressed his trembling hands onto the armrests of his wheelchair, and a quarter of an hour later, he gritted his teeth and tried to bear his body’s weight on his legs.
After all these years, Charles stood up once more.
Not by using his psychic power to force his body to move, but by relying on the strength of his body itself.
Abundant vitality and energy flowed through his legs, as if he’d never lost the ability to walk.
Angela put away the Caduceus Staff and said with a smile, “I’m just a doctor—though now and then I work a miracle too. What do you think, Professor X?”
It took Charles a long while to find his voice again.
From the bottom of his heart, he said, “I think I now fully understand why your old comrades called you ‘Angel’—because I think so too. You’ve brought a miracle.”
The way Angela saw it, she’d simply completed another treatment.
It wasn’t “trivial,” exactly, but it was hardly an achievement worth boasting about—set against a “Play of the Game” where she’d used a single Ultimate to revive five teammates, merely curing a functional disability like the inability to walk really was nothing to speak of.
Angela didn’t know how many years Charles Xavier had suffered over those legs, nor how long the person who’d caused the injury had suffered for it, and likewise she had no way of understanding what this meant to the mutant students of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.
But she’d find out soon enough.
Charles Xavier’s eyes—often a deep, brooding blue from the weight of his thoughts—suddenly cleared of their gloom, taking on a color as clear as an open sky, his joy plain to see.
With utter sincerity he said, “How can I ever thank you, Ms. Angela?”
Angela answered with a genuine smile.
“Perhaps you could start by dropping the formalities and just calling me ‘Angela.’ And, well—I’m guessing you’d rather not call me ‘Angel’ when the school already has one.
So how about ‘Mercy’?”
On the Overwatch official site, Angela Ziegler’s nickname was “Mercy”; it was only when translated into Chinese that the rendering “Angel” had been used.
Compared to “Angel,” “Mercy” better captured the essence of Angela Ziegler—mercy, compassion, tolerance, and good fortune.
Incidentally, the gamers back then generally took “good fortune” to mean “you’re lucky to get a single heal off a Mercy at all,” since the most common Mercy on the Chinese servers was the so-called “smoking Mercy”—the kind who never tossed out a single heal in the moment, just hung back having a smoke and waited for the whole team to die together so she could mass-Resurrect them all at once.
“Mercy—that’s a fine title.”
Charles Xavier understood perfectly the meaning packed into the codename, and after a moment’s thought he ventured his own idea.
“Angela, I don’t know how to express my gratitude. If you don’t mind, then until I’ve thought of a proper gift, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. You’ll be a permanent guest of honor at Xavier’s School. And if you’re willing to serve as a biology teacher here, I’ll pay you a separate salary.”
Angela was startled yet again.
A moment ago it was “stay here temporarily,” and now it had turned into “permanent guest of honor”—wasn’t this moving along a bit fast?!
She looked at the middle-aged man before her, about to talk him out of it, but all her words dissolved in those vaguely familiar blue eyes.
Nostalgia and a wistful melancholy rose up together, and Angela let out an unconscious sigh.
“Mr. Xavier, you really are a lot like someone I knew…”
Charles Xavier swiftly sensed that wave of nostalgia, and the tender emotion softened his expression too.
“You can call me ‘Charles’—otherwise it seems I ought to be addressing you as ‘Dr. Ziegler.'”
Angela blinked, and a strange feeling welled up at the familiar form of address.
She smiled and said, “All right, Charles. I’d be glad to serve as a biology teacher—but I’m afraid the knowledge I’m familiar with is a long way from where this world’s research currently stands. To be safe, until I’ve gotten to know the textbooks here, I’d better take a different post. Say, school physician—how about that?”
Charles Xavier nodded at once.
“Hank will be delighted.
Until now he’s been doubling as the school physician, and he’s complained to me more than once that it’s eating into his research—oh, and Hank is an expert in biology too.
I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to meet you.”
Angela said happily, “Then it’s settled?
Although—I don’t have any ID, so I can’t sign an employment contract.”
Charles Xavier took the opening for a joke.
“Mm, that does sound like it gives me grounds to withhold your wages.”
Angela raised an eyebrow, and Charles Xavier said at once, “It doesn’t matter within the school, but you’ll have to go out eventually, and not having ID would be a great deal of trouble. If you trust me, I’ll find a way to prepare an identity document for you.”
Angela couldn’t help laughing.
“If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t be staying. Since we’ve reached an understanding—may I ask what kind of school this actually is? I think I saw quite a few unusual students here.”
Charles Xavier nodded with a smile.
“Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters—it admits only Mutants.”
“Mutants…” Angela repeated the word, turning it over with a scientist’s ear, and a realization dawned.
Her researcher’s instinct as a doctor surfaced in an instant.
“So Warren Worthington III’s wings aren’t the result of some scientific experiment, but a genetic mutation—born that way? Do all the students here have genetic mutations? Do they all show outward, visible signs, or do some mutations stay hidden? Is it only the appearance that changes, or the physiology, or even more than that? Is this a mutation that stays stable through heredity, or one that appears by chance?”
She rattled off a string of guesses before catching herself, then flushed and apologized, embarrassed.
“Sorry—I think I got a little too excited.”
Charles Xavier shook his head tolerantly.
“You don’t need to apologize for that. In fact, the fact that you can face ‘mutants’ with this kind of attitude is already very good.”