Originally Posted by
marhawkman
Heh, reminds me of a fan-fic idea I came up with years back.
Monica Rappaccini decides she wants to weaponize super-soldiers in a way that hadn't been done successfully... yet. Genetic enhancements? Enh, not THAT ground-breaking. A.I.M.'s done it before. But the plan has two steps. Monica realizes that while she COULD make a bunch of supersoldiers, making a batch job would give S.H.I.E.L.D. a profile to look for. So after pondering things she decides to do something radical. Something that could lead to the extinction of the Human race(as we know it).
See, Monica has reasoned that if she was able to create diversion S.H.I.E.L.D. would never be able to be sure if it was A.I.M. agents or not until it was too late. The problem... is that the "diversion" needed to be random people who don't know they're a diversion, but show up on scanners nearly the same as AIM supersoldiers. So Monica has a research team figure out a way to make a complex mutagenic virus that, normally, only gives you such low-level powers you'd barely notice(most commonly and rather ironically: an enhanced immune system). But with the right stimulation can result in some extremely impressive powers.
But the twist is this needs data Monica doesn't have. So she talks Exodus into helping her acquire both copies of Mr. Sinister's research data, and Genoshan Magistrate techniques. Oh and yes, this DOES mean that anyone infected with her virus reads as a Mutant, though dna from several species was used, to include Skrull, Shiar and Kree. Part of this reasoning is that making it variable means it's harder to refine a proper baseline in scan results, but also adds more options for customization of powers. Also, there's more than one strain, just to make it harder to counter.
In practice, it sort of works. Monica is able to use the procedure first on a lab assistant(new character: Summer Hernandez) who helped create one of the virus strains, and after that worked, on herself. The powers package used in these cases has several psionic abilities, and also being tough enough to get smacked around by the Hulk. It didn't work 100% perfectly on either but was close enough that it was considered a success. In the case of the assistant, the flaw was subtle reductions in the effectiveness of some of her powers, in Monica's case it was her skin turned green.
Aftermath though? Monica succeeds at virus dispersal. An unknown, but probably in the thousands(or millions?) number of people have their DNA re-written by it.... some develop actual super powers though... not many, but some.... and the Sentinels freak out as the number of Mutants skyrockets.... And that other... obvious stuff. well, I never got around to actually figuring out an "endgame"... but the fallout was something Monica hadn't really expected. There were now dozens of people who were now super-Mutants... and any of THEIR children.... yeah... genetic re-writes happened. The genie has left the bottle.
This is kinda the opposite scenario. Although, if the virus makes "fake" Mutants, then it might not count for the Xmen's purposes.