"Sorry about that." I apologize after rejoining the group down in the basement. "Tess hasn't been having a good time of it since I botched that explanation of her condition."

"Amelia told us." Elise says with a complicated look on her face. "I should have kept a closer eye on her too. I didn't think about how she might react to that kind of news."

"Her coming back tonight instead of wandering off to get drunk makes me hopeful that she can move past it." I offer up a sad smile. "Now where were we?"

"Here." Amelia raises the orb of, now, supercritical carbon dioxide. "This stuff is so weird."

"You're probably sensing the lack of any surface tension..." I go on to explain what little I know about supercritical fluids and even draw up a generic phase diagram for those that are interested.

"As fascinating as all that is." Erick fights back a yawn. "I think we should get back to the manor now. Thank you for dinner, and sorry again about dropping in unexpectedly."

"No worries." I clap him on the shoulder. "We did the same for lunch. You've all helped me out so much since I got here that you're welcome to stop by any time. And, just ask if you need anything in the future. Though, maybe wait until after I finish that telegraph cable before you drop another big job on me." I add with a laugh.

"I'll do my best." He replies with a smile before leaving.

"We should get going too." Rozelle speaks up. "I just came down to get a good look at the basement, and see if there were any other ideas for when you spruce up my place." She chuckles and then guides her son out.

"Okay, fire extinguishers are on hold, but we have plenty of sand." I get back on track after they all leave. "So, that's not a big deal and just leaves us with the basic safety equipment. Safety glasses, lab coats, aprons, rubber gloves, respirators, fume hoods, eyewash stations, emergency showers, first-aid kits, spill kits, fire blankets, and secure chemical storage. Can you think of anything I missed?" I ask after listing off everything a lab should have.

"No, but I was wondering why you had showers and those odd fountains in the middle of the labs." Eliot laughs while examining the drawings I made to go along with the list. "I tried one but it didn't work."

"Oh, I left the pipes blocked while everyone running around the place." I use magic to turn the nearest shower on, unleashing a deluge of water. "From now on this floor will be restricted to the public, with only you, Melanie, and Cyril, the head of security having keys. Well, once he and his team get briefed on safety protocols, that is. I'm leaning towards 'Don't touch anything!' for them."

"Good protocol." Melanie laughs. "But, what if I want to give a key to someone else, say Cat for example?"

"Completely up to you." I say right away. "This is your floor to do with as you please. All I ask is that you try to produce enough silk to keep Felicia's crew busy, and maybe run the odd experiment for me. Manage that and you can do whatever you want."

"I do hope that you'll at least produce those rubber gloves." Delainey says to her. "I can assure you that the guild will be a regular buyer. I'd also like to put in a bulk order for some of the other safety gear. When you can get around to it, that is. I'm even thinking of adding some of this stuff to the guild regulations."

"Yeah." Eliot nods with a nervous laugh. "We don't even require a bucket of sand right now, and how stupid is that? 'Oh, you have a stone room? Well, then it'll be fine if something catches on fire.' Hah!"

"Point taken." Delainey grimaces. I suppose it must be an eye-opener to see what fifty years of OSHA has wrought when you've been handling things the same way forever. "I like the spill bucket too, not everyone knows the cleanse spell after all."

"Hey, at least you don't just let people dump stuff in the sewers." I recall my first day in town. "Okay, Apricot, put on this lab coat and light some water on fire for me; I need to make some glass. Amelia, you should be wearing one too, but you're too busy playing with your new toy, so it's alright." She just waves me away and keeps prodding at it.

"I've been wondering." Melanie ventures. "But, what are the coats for?"

"Protection." I answer while shrugging into my own forest green coat. "It's just an extra layer of clothing to protect you from splashes and spills. They're bright white to show right away if you do spill something on it. And, before you ask, I'm the boss; I get to wear whatever color I want."

"Heheheh." Delainey bobs his head while laughing. "It's good to be the one in charge sometimes."

"Yes, it is." I grin back at him. "Now, like I said, it's your floor, so I won't require any of this. But, I strongly recommend that you have those working with anything caustic wear the coat, glasses, and gloves at all times. As the company healer, the less work I get, the better."

She nods and I focus on melting pure silica into glass. This then gets molded into several sets of wrap-around lenses. I make them a bit on the thin side because glass is heavy and I actually want people to wear these.

"Nnh. Tempering glass this thin is not easy." I grumble and reheat the lens I'm working on to start again. "There that should do." I cool it the rest of the way and tap it with a rock a few times, the most scientific of methods, before hitting it with enough force to break it into countless tiny pieces. "Perfect."

"Any chance you can do that for all of the labware?" Melanie asks while rubbing an old scar on the back of her hand.

"Yeah, sure, give me more work." I let out an overly dramatic sigh. "Now, how do I look?" I take two completed lenses, fashion a form-fitting frame for them, and put the finished glasses on my face.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"You look like you won't get acid in your eyes." Eliot replies with a laugh. "And, that's good enough for me." I make his pair next.

"These are a little heavier than I'm used to." I admit. "But, they'll do for now. Maybe I can make something lighter out of the cellophane later, I've been meaning to play around with that."

"They don't seem that bad to me." The guild head says while playing with the pair I made for him. "I don't know about that cellophane stuff, but I'm not sure you could make glass thinner than this without the risk of it just shattering."

"We haven't made any yet." Melanie answers before I can. "But, Sorrel says that it's the same as the silk except made into thin transparent sheets instead of threads."

"It's pretty flimsy stuff though." I add. "So, I might need to cheat a little with magic and fuse a few layers into something stiffer." 'And, if that doesn't work I can always try making sapphire glass.' I add silently.

I tried fusing the alumina powder directly into corundum just like how I made quartz from silica, but it didn't work. I think it might be the added hardness; quartz is a hard rock, but it's nothing compared to sapphires which are only a step down from diamonds.

Luckily, back when I was smelting all of the aluminum, I remembered a YouTube vid I once saw where some guy used a hydrogen torch and alumina powder to make synthetic sapphires. I was able to copy what he did, and while shaping the tiny gem I made was a lot harder than working with quartz, it was leagues easier than trying to brute force one together from just the powder.

"For now, I should get started on the ampoules for the fire sprinklers though." I have a feeling that the fire chief will be back sooner rather than later. "I need to make sure that each one is identical so they all burst at the same temperature too. That's going to be fun."

I can't just eyeball this, and I have no idea how glass tubes are normally made. So, I create cylindrical molds in a variety of lengths and use the exact same weight of quartz sand turned to glass to coat their walls. I even spin them and use the centrifugal force to spread the glass evenly rather than do it with magic.

"Well, that was interesting to watch." Delainey says with a nervous laugh. "And, I love that to make these safety devices you chose to spin molten glass around at high-speed in mid-air."

"Mhm." I shrug. "I should be able to copy these in a less dramatic manner, but I needed that perfect example to work from." I go ahead and do just that, giving myself a dozen copies of each one. "Now to seal the ends and fill them with alcohol."

This takes more than a few tries to get right, and I end up having to make quite a few more tubes. I also make a glass dome, so everyone can watch the testing phase.

"I'll have to build a test room to set on fire later." I say while setting the first batch under the glass. "But, this will let me know at what temperature they each burst."

I slowly bring the temperature up, degree by degree, until the first one pops. I hold it there for a moment to see if any of the others will go off, but none do. A single degree increase takes out over half the remaining ampoules though, and one more does the rest.

"Yes! This is exactly what I was hoping to see." As long as all the tubes in a batch break within a couple degrees of each other, they should be good to use. "Now, I just have to repeat that with all the different thicknesses. And then, I get to burn stuff. In a tightly controlled manner, of course."

"Of course." Delainey and Eliot grin with me while the women just roll their eyes.

"I'm just glad that all that work I put into perfecting my cooking with magic is useful for this." I say while quickly working through all the other batches. "Otherwise I'd need to borrow a fire mage just for this testing."

""No you wouldn't."" All three alchemists say in unison and start laughing. "Chefs aren't the only ones who need precise temperature control." Melanie continues. "Each of us could do the same."

"I didn't even think of that." I smack myself lightly on the forehead. "I should probably learn a little more about alchemy, but, eh." I shrug. "That's what I hired you for. Now, who wants to go set some stuff on fire?"

"Me, me!" Apricot raises her hand just like a little kid in school.

"How about you, Babe?" I ask Amelia who is still playing around with the supercritical carbon dioxide. "Think you can pull yourself away from that for a bit?"

"No." She shakes her head. "But, I'll come along anyway."

The alchemists, my girls, and I take the elevator up to the ground floor and head outside where I build a stone room measuring three meters on each side. The room then gets filled with furniture similar to what's upstairs, only a bit dryer, and a line of sprinklers on the ceiling.

"Hold on a second, you little firebug." I hold the pixie back from igniting the room just yet. "We don't want these going off just because someone is cooking a big meal, so let's test that out first."

The room grows a fireplace and chimney, which Apricot lights as soon as I fill it with wood. Adding a big pot of boiling water quickly pops several of the thinnest ampoules.

"See, this is why we test." I strike those batches off the potential list, along with the next thinnest, just to be safe. "Now, you..." She's already started the fire.

"Um..." Catherine speaks up. "Is it safe to be standing next to this big glass window?"

"Oh, it's not glass." I tap on the window while keeping a close eye on the sprinklers. "I made this part of the wall out of solid quartz, like down in the lab. And, wow look at that stuff go up. I consider anything that hasn't gone off by this point to be a failure. So, how about we see what the sprinkler can do for this."

Letting water flow into the sprinkler head set up in the middle of the room has an immediate effect on the now raging inferno.

"I can see why the fire chief wants these." Delainey gulps when the clouds of smoke pouring out the sides of the building are replaced in short order by billowing steam.

"Uh, speaking of her." Apricot says while looking towards the city gates.

"Oh, Damn! I knew I was forgetting something." I smack myself on the forehead for real this time. "Good evening, Adriana." I send her a deep bow when she arrives on her water horse just a few seconds later. "My apologies for not warning the guard about this test, but that was a very impressive response time."

"You made them?" She peers in through the window to see the now extinguished room.

"Yes." I nod. "We were just testing which range of temperatures would be suitable for the average fire." I hand her a copy of my list detailing all of the different batches, what temperature they're tuned to and how long it took before they broke once the fire started.

"I'm going to kiss your man." she warns the girls before wrapping me up in a big bear hug and doing just that. "Hahaha. Oh, this is perfect."

"Damn, woman." Groan while trying to realign my spine. "Are you part beastkin?"

"Heh! Wimp." she snorts before snapping her head around to Amelia. "What on earth is that?"

"I know, right?" My water mage giggles. "Sorrel made some for fun and I haven't been able to stop playing with it since..." Amelia shows her how to create her own. "... and just the tiniest change can affect the balance."

"Can you do this with water too?" The fire chief asks while playing with her own ball of supercritical fluid.

"Yes, but the pressure and heat needed are several times greater." I answer off-handedly. While they were playing around, I cleaned up the mess from the fire and started making the rest of the safety gear. "Oh, and... be careful when you do that." I have to laugh when she drops the pressure on the co2 making it explode into cold foam.

"That... was cold." Adriana comments after conjuring warm water to wash away all the foam.

"Yup." I nod and put down the fire blanket I used to shield myself. "Are you okay, Sweetie?" She was standing right next to them and got caught right in the face.

"I hate science!" She pouts and surrounds herself with enough heat to make waves in the night air.

***