“Susan?” her husband Reed asked carefully, as she didn’t stop until she couldn’t inhale any more.

She held her breath for a good ten seconds more, clearly enjoying something, and then exhaled regretfully. “This... I was tasting this with my lungs!” she smiled, clearly enjoying herself.

“I was sublimating mine directly, with no need to swallow them or digest it,” Dr. Richards nodded. “Johnny, yours was literally burning inside your mouth?”

“Sure felt like it!” he agreed happily, snagging another one. “Wow! Way better than eating jalapenos!” He took another bite as his head flamed back on, and he tilted it back to gargle and enjoy the sensation.

“These seem to be tailored to each one of us as individuals,” Richards pointed out, gesturing at all of them. “I hazard that if we eat the wrong ones, they won’t react or taste so well?”

“Correct, they’re reacting to your Powered energies, which are along the classic Elemental lines of fire, earth, air, and water. There’d be definite hostile reactions on the wrong muffins intruding into another Element,” I confirmed. “Alchemy is chemistry that throws snit fits, after all.”

Dr. Richards smiled despite himself. “And you’ve a bit of this type of power as well? Fire?” he asked. “Not air?” he went on.

“From a magical standpoint, Fire and Cold, actually.” Johnny left off his fire-gargling, snapping his head down to watch as my right hand heated up to red heat, and gentle flames ignited on my fingertips. “This is about the extent of the heat I can manage.” I flashed it into a foot-long line of flame, my hand actually returning to normal for a second, before reheating. “I can heat up water, but not boil it, and I can ignite flammable stuff if I need to.”

I held up my other hand, which turned pale blue, moisture in the air condensed rapidly and rimed it in ice. “I can freeze water to ice, but nothing greater, like, oh, carbon dioxide, or anything.

“Really, the biggest thing is that I’m pretty much immune to temperature extremes. I won’t burn, and I won’t freeze.”

From Johnny Storm’s expression, that was more than enough. “You... you won’t get burned if my flame is on?” he challenged as much as begged me for it to be true.

His head was still burning. I reached out fearlessly, and he ducked his head so I could put my hand on it.

“About fourteen hundred C,” I said after a few seconds, my hand cherry red but clearly not at all discomfited. “That you testing me, or do you normally burn that hot?”

“Um...” he managed brightly.

“Fire is an Element that wants to get free and be exuberant. True masters of fire have utter control and focus of their flames. It’s the opposite of Earth, which is a solid and stolid Element. Masters of Earth are the ones who can get it into motion and make it dance.” I tapped in front of Mr. Grimm. “If you want to grow your power, concentrate on becoming faster. Nobody fears a slow-moving rock. Avalanches, on the other hand...”

“Huh,” Mr. Grimm said to that, thinking. “I thought becoming stronger would be more important...”

“Eat and drink the right stuff, and you’ll get stronger and tougher regardless. But faster, more powerful... you have to learn to ignore human limitations on how fast you can move. I suggest more silver and gold in your diet... builds faster reflexes, so you can actually keep up with how fast you can move.”

“Izzat so?” he sighed. “Pretty expensive diet.”

“And it won’t even work if you aren’t pushing yourself in that direction in the first place,” I went on. “As for your second question, Dr. Richards, no, my lightning is totally separate from the fire and cold in its source. However, like the four of you, it’s still non-Core, so I don’t have a Core, either.”

“You have experience and knowledge of Core Disciplines?” he asked alertly, and I had to remember that they couldn’t tell how old I was with my Mask in place.

“I do. You all don’t have active Cores because the source of your powers didn’t trigger the X-gene, it literally transformed your whole bodies for you, instead, and established a tie from the Elements which provides the power source for you being able to do what you do.”

“Radiation is a known trigger for X-genes,” Richards began, and I waved my hand to stop him.

“I am aware of that, Dr. Richards. Would I be off-target to say that I believe you were messing around with dimensional energies at the time of that accident of yours?”

He hesitated, looking around. Susan just sighed and nodded, Grimm grunted and shrugged, and Johnny obviously didn’t care. “There was a hyperdrive recovered from an alien craft we were going to test out and see if it was viable. It may have been the reason our radiation shields failed in the first place.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“A rad-storm plus a dimensional event?” Even I had to raise my eyebrow. “Next thing you’re going to be talking about custom gene-boosting to acclimate for space travel.”

Susan let out a loud gasp of surprise, Johnny nearly choked on his third muffin, and Grimm sighed, looking at Dr. Richards.

His glance at his wife showed me who had done that. “It was just a booster to help with radiation resistance and vertigo...”

“And it somehow combined to get the four of you out of a freak accident alive instead of as radioactive corpses. You do know how to set a stage.” I shook my head, smiling. “But, I’m sure you were asking the question to see if you could do a Core diversion and have Mr. Grimm able to regain his human form. The answer to that is yes, it IS possible,” they all gasped, “but you need to have your Core Awakened, which I cannot do, and then you need to take the long way, learning Core Disciplines as a Psion in metabolic techniques until you can morph back to human.

“Generally speaking, its easier to go the magical route up the Earth Elemental tree, learn Elemental Form, reverse it, and be able to take human form that way. It should be remarkably easy, since you used to be a human.”

The blue-eyed lump of rock looked at me blankly. “Magic?” he finally repeated. “Me?” he pointed at himself.

“If you’re specializing in just one branch of magic, it’s not that hard to learn... and you being who you are, like I said, it should come remarkably easy,” I told him.

“What about the rest of us?” Johnny Storm spoke up, looking suddenly interested. I blinked at him. “I mean... I don’t have anyone to teach me about this stuff, y’know? I’m a genius with engines and fuels and drives and things, but this turning into fire, I’m learning on my own. It would be nice to get an idea of what I can do, you know?”

“The short answer is yes, you’d all be good at your Elemental lines, and it would do nothing but help you over time. The long answer is... magic is very deep, very personal, and very powerful. Once you start on its road, it will suck you in, because there’s just so much to learn about the universe on that level. Dr. Richards, for example... your work on raising the scientific standard of your homeland here would take a nose-dive. You won’t have the time to spend on doing both.”

He stared at me for long moments. “I had no idea that magic could be so all-encompassing,” he admitted after a moment. “It’s not a field of endeavor I’ve looked into in the past.”

“It’s not readily accessible here in the States, as the colonists pretty much trampled all over the native users and didn’t really bring much of their own, nor have they had the time to develop them, especially specialist traditions.” I gently steered away from more radical words on the topic. “Also, the Christian churches are dead-set against magic-use in all forms as a threat to their religion, which doesn’t help practitioners. Their arts aren’t all black magic, but the churches aren’t going to admit that.”

Dr. Richards frowned, then sighed. “The Church has been known to be an opponent of science too, Dynamo,” he reminded me.

“Ah, don’t get me started on repressive religious history, Dr. Richards.” I waved both my hands urgently at him, and he smiled despite himself.

“Do you have a field of study you pursue?” Susan spoke up quickly, eager to find out more about me. “Alchemy?”

“Sure, depending on how you define alchemy. Conservatives just look on it as the magical properties of matter being brought forth. Liberals construe it as how the rules and laws of the universe work, be they magical or scientific. They’d consider Dr. Richards an alchemist specializing in Weird Science and making things do what they normally would not via technological means.”

Dr. Richards frowned. “I suppose that is a very liberal definition of science, if you consider magic another science.”

“Magic has the downside of having Chaos in the mix, so it varies by individual, changes ever-so-slowly over time, and so has Rules, not Laws.” I shrugged at his expression. “All part of the alchemical outlook.

“But that’s downtime stuff, and I only putter. I don’t have the money to buy a proper lab with materials to really do stuff. After all, that’s why I came to you, to drop that case off.”

I saw Johnny Storm’s eyes light up. “You need a lab?” he asked.

“Need is a strong word. I have a place I putter in and try to make better Earth-biased coffee. I don’t do cutting-edge research on the advanced edge of the sciences... or magic, for that matter.

“But sure, I could use a full alchemy lab, who couldn’t?”

Surprisingly, it was Susan Storm who spoke up. “We don’t mind encouraging talents, and we have plenty of room on the floors below to set something up. But aren’t the components of an alchemical lab a little, well, special?”

“You mean eye of bat and tail of newt and all that Shakespearean stuff? Sure, that’s one branch of alchemy, biased towards the magical side. I tend to work with Energized elements in various aspects instead. I’m not interested in turning base metals into gold. Too slow and costs more than just digging up or buying more gold yourself.”

“The search for eternal youth? Perpetual motion? The universal solvent?” Dr. Richards spoke up with a smile.

“Break Twenty, become Eternal. Problem solved, not that there aren’t a dozen other ways. Perpetual motion already exists; perpetual motion that has a continual supply of excess energy and is actually useful is somewhat harder. Universal solvents are actually in varying grades, and the highest levels use Chrono-Elements to apply infinite time to stuff to erode it away. Better off using a disintegration beam, all other things being equal.”

My realistic approach to matters mystical and weird science made them all smile despite themselves. “Too grounded ta work here,” Grimm said sagely. “And she works on weirder stuff than any of you!” he added for emphasis.

“Having access to a trained alchemist would be very useful,” Dr. Richards admitted. “In addition to your... other skills,” he said diplomatically, sipping his next cup of muffin-coffee. “Would you be interested in such an offer?”

“Well, what are the terms?” I asked calmly, smiling slightly. “It definitely wouldn’t be a nine to five job for me. I’ve something of a broad array of items on my agenda, and it probably wouldn’t surprise you that nothing alchemical is appropriate for mass production, as it all requires an individual touch.”

“Hmm.” Dr. Richards stroked his chin thoughtfully. “So, you’d be working more on individual, special projects?”

“Or small-scale, personal production. Making a few hundred lightning bullets is possible. Setting up an assembly line of them is not. Oh, almost forgot something.”

I reached into my Masspack and pulled out the Crux's version of the Satan Claw. “Ever seen one of these?”