The fluorescent lights of the basement hummed to life. Footsteps entered the room as Roland surveyed the area. He had nothing but work to do. Before him on the table lay several different guns and devices, neatly arranged in their disassembled parts. Accent lights were on and he was turning them to face various arrangements on the table as well as different sections of his stealth suit. He brewed himself a large pot of coffee for the long night ahead.

His polished and pristine movements against his foes were not automatic. Hardly. He had spent so long pretending that he was not a mutant that it put him at a disadvantage without this kind of meticulous planning. As he poured himself a cup of steaming coffee, he recalled a time long ago when he was on a job. He pulled a gun on a recon mission and the hand cannon blasted away, not being the mere clicks and chirps of the silenced variety. Without planning, everything was a crap shoot. A simple coin toss where Lady Luck was prayed to. His new mutant foes would not give him the quarter to pray nor wait for chance to intercede.

Where to begin? The disassembled guns seemed to ask to go first, longing for their established personae. Roland stood before what appeared to be an MP5. He had a chess clock before him and slapped the top to start the clicking arm. Parts began assembling in an orderly, yet not so timely a fashion. He would be shot by now. Once it was finished and the clock reset, he began again, his mind working the pieces.

Seconds became minutes and then moved into the shadows of hours. Multiple combinations of gun parts and bullets worked their ways across the worktable as they searched for their sibling pieces, working themselves into a timely unity under Roland's watchful eye and controlled mutation. It caused him a bit of mental fatigue to work the same combinations and precise pre-planned movements, but he knew that one day these exercises would save his life.

After what seemed to be hours, Roland took a break and put the guns away into their locked lockers, gun locks affixed dutifully to pass any inspection by law types. He then went upstairs and got the fire roaring and a stiff glass of whiskey. He stood in front of the inferno, sipping his drink and preparing himself for the more complex exercises that lay ahead in wait for him. He took a hot shower and then applied a generous amount of talcum powder to his nude body, shortly after making his way back to the basement, disrobed and powdered.

He found himself standing before his stealth suit. The bonuses and constant visitations to Mondragon Labs and their R&D facilities had begun to make their mark on the suit. It was changing from stealth prototype to standard weapon, as familiar as his money belt. While looking a bit pale from the liberal amount of powder applied to his form, this , like all things to Roland, had a purpose. He looked at the suit as it clung to the solid foam mannequin before him. He'd start small, with the gloves and boots.