@phisigmatau: He has a natural defense against energy-based attacks. When Stan Lee created this dude, he explained that this guy's power works similar to photosynthesis. He can absorb energy and convert it into heatless ruby-colored blasts of nothing but hard light with raw and devastating amounts of kinetic power. This makes him only strong in the daylight and not at night time. For his inability to control them, Stan Lee stated that he had childhood physical trauma in his brain which makes him unable to control them.
But it was discarded when mutants with the power to heal started appearing. In Claremont's era, he rewrote the process of photosynthesis with his eyes having interdimensional apertures to a non-Einsteinian dimension of nothing but pure concussive energy. Also, his energy resistance is because of his genetic immunity towards his brother, Havok's powers. Unlike Scott who was written as someone who feeds upon solar energy, Havok was given stronger powers and greater control over it.
Havok has the power to no only absorb sunlight, but all sorts of ambient energy. Like his brother, he also has the power to convert them and his output comes out as heated blueish white plasma beams that he can shoot from his chest and hands. As for Scott on the other hand, he is only a solar battery. So when the readers first saw Scott being immune to Alex's blast, an explanation was needed. Thus comes the genetic immunity. And because Alex's powers involve various types of energy, it makes Scott immune to all of them except for sunlight, which he absorbs.
Now here is my question. Instead of the genetic immunity, what if Scott has the power to negate all forms of energy. Since Ultimates Vol 2. confirmed the existence of the punch dimension the future writers as well as the audience has no other choice but to accept the interdimensional apertures. Also, during Gran Morrison's run, we saw him as unstable and full of inner turmoil. In the prelude issue for the Eve of Destruction, Scott explains the true nature of his powers as well. While we saw him as a competent leader, we also saw him as a family man.
To add to this point, a psychological corruption or empowering does not make someone change completely as a person. It is what we are lead to believe and so does Summers and the other X-Men. What it does is forcing them to accept or embrace the part of themselves that they don't want to. Scott lived as a son, brother, friend, student, leader, teacher, hero, lover, husband, mentor, and father. In many different ways, Scott lived his life to its fullest before the gathering of the Twelve. And within it, apart from son, brother, student, mentor, and father, everything else was with Jean. The heart of the X-Men is its original power couple and their struggle.
When Logan came into the team at first, he served as the counter to Scott's character. This at first despised and later intrigued Scott's wife Jean Grey. Also, Emma's romantic attempts and their journey together slowly turned Scott into someone confident and outspoken. All in all, Scott became the Squall Leonhart of X-Men. But it came with a cost. Scott and Jean's relationship was forever strained. He almost had a psychic affair with Emma and caught redhanded by the last person he would accept.
Now, let's come back to the part about empowering and corruption. Before the Twelve saga, he was a complete man, and joining Apocalypse warped him and slowly changed his personality. However, this is not what happened at all. What happened is the beast within him woke. In biblical and other terms, being empowered means that they have accepted or let go of your inner beast, and being corrupted means having fully embraced it. To make things worse, unlike Logan and Warren who knows when to let his beast out, Scott never leaned it. His whole life is about controlling and overcoming his life of pain and finding a better path.
After his merge with Apocalypse, his beast which he momentarily suppressed with the help of his friends and family slowly became unleashed. His new dry sense of humor, radical approach to the missions, frequent violent outbursts, and everything about him changed. While some say that his love for his friends Jean and Nate kept him together, he began to feel like losing them. Also, with his newfound confidence comes his new ruthless approach in dealing with his enemies. Rather than doing what's right, he begins to do what is necessary.
This was further explored in the Astonishing X-Men. Here we learn that Scott's trauma comes from a more psychological level rather than a physical level. With mutants like Elixr by their side, if Scott wished upon healing his brain injury, he would've done it long ago and he could control his blasts. Instead, he was not. What Josh Whedon showed us is that Cyclops' powers are uncontrollable due to childhood psychological trauma.
Since born, he lived with a military background. As a child who was orphaned and later losing his brother, he repressed his real feelings about things. During his stay at the orphanage, he was never considered by any family to be adopted, even though there was one they disappeared later on. While at the orphanage he was constantly bullied by another orphan but found solace and friendship with a fellow victim. One day the bully committed suicide and his friend slowly became his bully.
To make things worse, he had severe blunt force trauma in his head due to plane crash and gets frequent headaches due to his powers manifesting. One day his powers manifested out of the blue and he ran away from the orphanage. On his first attempt at heroism, he was chased out and called a freak and a monster. This was worsened when he was finally adopted by a man who is secretly a career criminal. Later on, he learned of this and with the help of another mutant named Xavier and an FBI agent named Fred Duncan, he put his adopted father into prison.
As such, before moving with Xavier, he lived a harsh life full of pain and struggle. Emma managed to help Scott overcome this pain by correctly identifying the truth. She helped him overcome his fears, shame, and pain and helped him become a confident man and a leader of his light. Thus we get the present-day Cyclops, whom some of us have.
Now let's get back to the main topic. Throughout long history, his powers were confirmed to have been coming from the punch dimension rather than the photosynthesis process everyone believes it to be. To make his new source of powers more valid, he was written with possessing psionic fields around his eyelids and body which negates the energy. However, it does not negate the blunt damage. To make things more complicated this field can also negate the power of Alex Masters.
The question is why. While everyone tells it is because of Scott's genetic immunity, I think that there is something else in play. Another time he had shown immunity to a mutant's power is when he survived a lightning bolt from Storm in the X Men Worlds Apart comic. In Alex's case, his powers are due to absorbing different types of energies. So why can't Scott have a defensive power?
My conclusion was a power that suppresses others. His psionic fields not only make him immune to his and his brother's beams, but it also makes him immune to a variety of energies including electric, electromagnetic, and radiation-based. All in all, his psionic fields are similar to the right hand of Kamijou Touma from A Certain Magical Index, also known as the Imagine Breaker. As his new power, he should be fully capable of extending this field like Black Panther's kinetic energy wave and use it as an EMP. Thus I propose his powers be something that negates others.
However, I am denying his powers to be the same as those in the visual contact. Rather I want it to be like an EMP wave that interferes with other superpowers. And this extends to all forms of powers since he is immune to most of the energies thanks to his resistance to his own brother's powers. While he can suppress the powers of certain beings, he will not be able to use it against a required group such as the Inhumans whose powers do not involve energy, except Crystal, Blackbolt, and a few others. So I am changing my suggestion of ocular based power erasure to power negation field generation.
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