Dynamo looked away, whistling. Well, sure she could do that. She was an Alchemist, after all. He’d make a great organic computer component.
He also realized there were reasons that Mr. Hill kept her around. He wondered how much she was manipulating him, and how.
Hill had to know, and by the looks of it, didn’t care.
He was pretty sure he wouldn’t care, either, her looking like she did. So much better than the Amazon in the vids!
“Tell you what.” Hill set down his empty bottle, chomping on the last of his cigar. “I wasn’t going inta work t’day, but now I am.
“I am gonna give you a tour of the place, an’ the Fixer is gonna tell me how he would fix it ta make himself a fucking fortune. Let’s go, Ebersol.” He got up, rising to his full height, and stepped over to a section of the stone floor.
Marbled tile of some kind he’d never seen. Probably REALLY expensive.
Ebersol left his empty drink, kept his cigar, and stepped over to The Mountain’s side.
A second later they fell down into the stone as he held onto his stomach, and they were gone.
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Welp, that was going to set the tone for today. I guessed I should stop into the Baxter Building and start downloading and laying out what I learned Out There. The tech I had around here would only handle the rough outlines.
“Fritz! Lucky!” There was a jingle of collars upstairs, and the dogs came running down the stairs eagerly, lining up next to me. I’d fixed their hearing issues long ago. “Guard him,” I said, pointing to the oblivious, snoring Juggernaut.
They both barked softly. Being only terrier size, they ran right up his legs, Fritz curling up on his belly, and Lucky on his chest. Anything that came in was going to get a big barking to and wake Cain up, who had a big soft spot for the dogs.
They fetched him his beer when he stopped in, after all.
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A few weeks pass...
Reed and Sue Richards looked at the circular doorway/portal in front of them, set in a section of load-bearing wall that led absolutely nowhere with nothing beyond it. It was now leading out into a section of hallway in a familiar style, which had nothing to do with the Baxter Building.
A thick cable of Electro-volturium snaked along the passageway and plugged into a primary conduit opposite the hallway. By the vestigial flows of energy moving through it, it was carrying a lot of power out.
“I imagine ConEd is going to owe us a bit more money this month,” Susan observed, seeing that. “That should be enough to light up all the Burroughs, right?”
“Yes.” Reed ran his finger above the gleaming Runes along the edge of the Portal. “Technomagic, Dyna’s style.” The two of them stepped past the Portal, feeling the atmosphere and temperature change, a slightly different mix of gasses. “Shi’ar ship,” he judged. “Which one?”
“Wasn’t she helping Clark with some of the stuff on the one The Hag chopped in two?” Susan asked as they followed the cable down the hallway.
They ran across a second cable leading into a side chamber. Poking their head around the corner, they were a bit surprised to see Richard Ryder there, laying on a service table and snoring loudly, while a power coupler was anchored to his chest and a LOT of crazily sparking particle effects were pouring into him.
“Going for level Four, Mentor?” Reed asked pleasantly, assessing what was going on.
“The Shi’ar power core has an eclectic output range we are taking full advantage of, Doctor,” the AI in Ryder’s helm replied on coms. “Dynamo did not want to waste its power output, and after some finagling was able to put together this convertor for young Richard.”
Level Four was a major breakthrough level for the Nova Corps, putting them firmly into Paramount territory. “Carry on then!” he waved, and the red star on the helm glittered a moment in reply.
Having a feeling of where they were, they quickly headed forwards and found themselves in the engineering core of the crippled Shi’ar light cruiser, whose name translated as something like Talons from the Void.
Dynamo was down there at the engineering stations, a few new recording devices and sensors set up to monitor the seething inferno of the power core behind them. The two of them were a bit surprised to see her wearing one of the power couplers, too, feeding right into her back as she worked, and totally ignored as it did, although it seemed to be putting in pure electricity... just in the gigajoule range.
“Dynamo, do you have a minute?” Sue called out, as they made their way down from the upper engineering level.
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I looked back up and at them, and immediately frowned. Without any hesitation, I uncoupled the power harness and set it aside, while telekinesis shut off all the Terran equipment around, dimming the production of the power core markedly as it did so. I could handle a much bigger controlled energy dump than Nova, after all, as I didn’t need to ‘digest’ it.
I skated up to the two of them as they reached the engineering floor, grabbing their arms. Arcs of lightning played around their Kirlian Auras, and I frowned. “You’re pregnant, Sue,” I said in a hushed voice. “Crap!” I added as an afterthought, seeing something going on.
One blue eye and one brown eye looked back at me. The skin over Sue’s face was darker and more Mediterranean in hue than her own Scandinavian background, and her blonde hair was now brown with white at the temples.
“I was right, dear,” Richard said through their shared mouth, wrapped so tightly around his wife that unless you knew what was going on, it actually didn’t look like he was there at all, and Sue had just put on some skin cream and hair dye.
Susan sighed, her voice sounding a little faint, like it was coming through a filter or something. “Dynamo, I’m having a problem...” she began, and I waved her to quiet, my examination via electricity not stopping.
“Having Reed in the way isn’t helping, but you started to discorporate, didn’t you?” I asked her, staring at her belly.
I’d let her use Gaseous Form Potions in the past, testing out her affinity for moving in air form, maybe as an Air Elemental. She’d shown no skill or feeling for it, probably because she didn’t have a real Matrix, but she was at least familiar with the sensation.
“It was very slow and subtle, but I was emitting gasses and going invisible without control,” Susan sighed, a very real note of worry in her voice. “Reed wrapped me up, and has even spread over my mouth, nose, ears, and elsewise, as there was leakage from all of them.” Obviously controlling herself, she took a deep breath, basically the air passing through Reed’s transformed lungs into her own, and then being filtered back out so she didn’t lose any of her own substance. “What is happening?”
“Your Elemental power is being brought down and wrapped around the baby to protect it, and it is destabilizing the rest of you,” I told her. “If this keeps up, you’ll discorporate and lose the baby, and maybe yourself.”
Their fist clenched. “I won’t let that happen!” Reed swore instantly. “What do we have to do to help her?!”
“It’s because she has such a static magical Core,” I sighed, letting go of their arms and stepping back from them. “I’m sorry, Susan, I really should have insisted you build up a Matrix and start exploring at least foundational Elementalism. Reed, that goes the same for you.” I put a hand to my head as I stared at the two of them, the husband literally wrapped around his wife and keeping her from slowly turning into gas using their close Elemental Affinity.
“The solution to this is easy, but time-consuming. You need to develop a Matrix of Elemental power and use its power draw to satisfy the protection requirements for the baby, instead of stealing the power from your Elemental Core, which is tied into your whole body and the quantum pattern imposed on you after your Power-up.” I crossed my arms and stared at the two of them. “Reed, this applies to you, as well. Both Ben and Johnny have Matrixes... it represents a fundamental imbalance in the Elemental Circle you all represent. You have to get on a more even keel.”
The brown eye shifted around, and their face grimaced. “My God, Dyna, I have so much work to do...”
“On the contrary, Dr. Richards, you don’t have any work at all,” I corrected him calmly. “Right now, you have ONE thing to do, or you’re going to lose your wife and child.”
Their face hardened instantly. “I understand. Sue?” he asked reasonably.
“We have financial obligations on things that you have committed to,” she said quickly. “You normally do them in between your research projects.”
“List them out, I’ll get them handled. We’ve got the brainpower to do it here, we’ll just treat it as subcontracting. Find a clean area on your researches and stop them. You can pick them back up when you get back,” I told her firmly.
The brown eye darted around, already making plans. “I should be able to get everything set and shut down within six hours,” he nodded once. “Sue, how about you?”
“I’ll leave my notes for Peter and Gwen, and they should be able to finish up without a problem. Dyna, what about Johnny and Ben?”
“Yeah, what about us?” a gravelly voice asked up above, as Ben in his human form and Johnny walked in together. Ben leaned over and stared at Reed and Sue wrapped up like that. “Stretch, you don’t do that unless both of you have had a bad night. Me and the firebug felt something was off. What’s going on?”
“There’s a harmonic imbalance between the four of you because Reed and Sue don’t have Matrices yet. Sue’s pregnant, and her body is trying to protect the baby from any effects of the dissonance. It’s leeching at her Core, and her body is starting to discorporate as her power is leaking out,” I informed him.
“Oh, shit!” Johnny blurted out, his hair popping into flames, which I also noted. His control was jittery. He tried REALLY hard not to do that.
Ben frowned hard. “What needs ta be done?” the practical man said, mind on the here and now. They were all looking at me as the outsider and expert on what was happening here.
“For all practical purposes, the FF is mostly going to be shut down while this happens. Ben, you should be fine, as you’ve the most developed Matrix. Johnny, you need to get to Seven in Sorcerer at top speed.” I said, pointing at him. “The fastest way to do it is near the sun. The slower way is to sit in an active volcano. Take your pick, and go. Come back when you’re a Seven.” Ignoring his expression, I turned back to Ben. “No advancing your Matrix until everyone else is a Seven, too. You want to keep advancing your Earthpower, you pour it into Avatar.”
“Got it,” he nodded without complaint. “Reed and Sue?”
I turned my eye on the pair of them. “Happily, Air and Water are fairly close as Elements go, so joint Meditation should only be helpful for the two of them. We just have to find a place with lots of wind and water magic... which I have no clue on. I’m going to have to consult someone on a location. Since they have to create AND build to Seven, this is going to take months.
“Ben, I’m going to need your Ring.”
He just grunted, took the rock-hued circle off his thumb, and tossed it into the air. Vier grabbed it and zipped it down to my hand.
I slipped off my Air Elemental Command Ring, kinda wincing. Three months to make one of these things! “Dr. Richards, here’s your guide to Water Elemental Magic.” I held up Ben’s Ring, and fit it on over their right index finger. It shrank to fit perfectly, standing out against the blue glove. “Sue, here’s your guide to Air Elemental Magic. Reed, allow it to touch her skin, there’ll be no issues, and it’ll help stabilize her.” I put it on their left index finger, watching the glove ripple ever-so-slightly.