Both of them smiled despite themselves. “Restraint, got it. So, you think I should make up a list of stuff not to do...” He ruminated over that, and then a clipboard and paper materialized in his hands, writing scrawled over the latter. “What else?”

“Take care of those close to you,” I shrugged. “I don’t mean coddle them, but you are very rapidly going to outgrow this house.” I gestured around me. “I mean, you could make it out of solid gold if you want to. You have no limits on your potential wealth, and I’m sure you realized it, too.

“So, take care of them. Be aware of them. There are stupid people who might want to try to control you by threatening those you love, be it your family, your friends, your city, country, or entire species and world.”

“This is getting big fast...” Ben murmured, then glanced at the book on May’s seat.

“You’re in the biggest of the big leagues. Congratulations.” My smile wasn’t mirthful.

“Sounds like just more work, and I got drafted again, not awarded,” he grumbled, writing again.

“Well, that’s what being responsible is about. Creates more work.” I pointed at him. “Take care of yourself, too.”

“What do you mean?” he asked quickly.

“You’re a middle-aged man with a bad back and knees, and arthritis in your hips and hands.” I shrugged. “Your wife is no longer young, either.

“But those are just molecules.”

“Oh. Ohhhh...” He stared some more writing into existence. “But I don’t know how to do that yet.”

“Train yourself.” I gestured at the book. “You already have a good idea of your potential. Even using really simple stuff, you have colossal power if you care to wield it.

“The most important thing for a scientist, engineer, or mechanic is to know what is going on, right?” He nodded once. “Well, that’s what you have to do. You have to look at stuff, and see what is going on, down at the molecular level. Taking stuff apart, putting simple stuff back together, moving stuff around is the easy stuff. Building complex self-sustaining systems is a bit harder... but, for instance, removing the extra fat from your midsection and tightening up your skin to remove the wrinkles should be totally possible.

“Likewise, just removing the arthritis from your joints, rebuilding your bones, clearing out your veins and arteries, and the like should be pretty easy, once you can perceive what is there and doesn’t belong.

“From there, reinforcing and rebuilding your own genetic structure back to your prime is a possible step, but I don’t know if you need smarts or something else to do that.”

“Wait, you’re saying... I could become young again?” he blurted out, eyes going wide.

“I’m not sure if you noticed it, but you stopped aging already, because you’re not letting yourself degrade. Fixing yourself and your wife back up is the next step.”

“Damn, Peter. Didn’t you say we barely had a computer big enough to store a, a DNA molecule, or something?” he asked his nephew. “How’m I supposed to memorize that?”

“You don’t, because you don’t have to,” I replied. “DNA is a set of instructions to build someone. All you have to do is assemble the thing it wants to build, which is an idealized version of you. Then you compare that to who you are, and make the adjustments.”

He stared at me a moment, then wagged his finger at me slowly. “You smart people are dangerous, you know that?”

“Yes.”

He harrumphed. “What about getting superpowers, like Peter?” he asked directly. Peter blinked.

“That would require comprehension of how whatever energy is driving Peter and me rewrote our DNA and is working on us. That’s where you are talking brains. Maybe it would take care of itself, maybe not. It would probably be better to imitate some source or power that could do the job, and just use your own power to maintain it.”

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

“Wow, this is heady stuff.” He blinked down at the paper, and then slowly took off his glasses, blinking again. “Huh.”

“Vision failure is loss of muscle strength and lens flexibility. You’re just telling your eyes to focus, and they are obeying.” I gestured around us. “You could pretend to have superstrength by just telling your hand to keep going under or through something, for instance. It would just obey, and lift whatever you wanted, or punch through something.”

He set aside his glasses quietly, looked at them, and remarked, “I was getting a bit hard of hearing in my right ear, too. There’s no buzzing now.”

I nodded. “Same thing. The cause is still there, you’ve basically just told it no, you’re not blocking my hearing any more.

“If you want to actually remove it, you’ve got to learn how to see cells and molecules and atoms, and take them apart precisely, instead of in broad strokes.”

“Any way to help with that?” he asked.

I clapped my hands together and frowned. “Well, are you willing to take a big dive into the deep end?” I asked.

He considered that for a moment, and then took a deep breath. “I have to do it sooner or later, right? I don’t think I’ll drown...”

“Let’s go outside for a moment.” He was startled when I stood up, but then his clothes changed to a plain pair of pants and a t-shirt, and he followed me outside, along with Peter.

I stood out there on the sidewalk in front of their house, and looked up at the sky. “Lady Sersi, your student awaits you. Could you come on down here and introduce yourself?”

I was looking at a specific point in the sky. Both men stared there, but couldn’t see anything.

There was a ripple as something came out of some form of concealment, dropping down from the sky smoothly.

She was a very tall and statuesque woman, Amazonian in figure, and a heart-stopping beauty to boot; raven-haired, pale-skinned, and green-eyed, clad in a figure-hugging outfit of black and green that both hid and showed everything at once.

“Flux!” Peter blurted out in shock as she descended smoothly to the pavement.

“That’s her public name, as for some reason the men-into-pigs reputation of the Sorceress of Crete might be taken wrong,” I informed them as she arched an eyebrow at me. “Lady Sersi of the Eternals of Terra, I am Dynamo. This is Peter Parker, probably better known as Spider-man, a trainee of SHIELD and Peggy Carter, and this is his uncle Benjamin Parker, the new Molecule Man.”

She scanned us aloofly, giving each of us a polite nod. “How did you sense my presence?” she asked me directly.

“Alchemist. I saw you floating around yesterday when I came to visit, and you were here tonight, too.”

“Indeed?” Her eyes turned from me to Ben Parker, assessing him. “I was warned that a very powerful being with the power to control molecules had awoken here, and if something went wrong, it would be best if I was here to handle it. Contact could be made at my own discretion.”

At my nod, Ben Parker, clearly impressed by her, spoke up, “That would probably be me, then.”

“I haven’t sensed any manipulation of reality, and sense no power upon you,” she stated directly. “Can you give me a demonstration of this ability?”

“Looks like the front of the house needs some work?” I mentioned, all of us turning around to look at it.

Atoms and molecules flowed. Wood straightened, paint sealed, gutters restored, cement filled in and smoothed out, holes were plugged, cracks vanished, rust reverted, and everything lined up smartly.

I watched her face out of the corner of my eye. She wasn’t impressed per se, but I could tell she still couldn’t tell what kind of power he was using to do that, either.

“Interesting. It is a level of skill common among my people,” she admitted. “But I fail to see why it should occupy my attention.”

“Oh, that.” I waved airily. “Could you move us about one hundred miles off to the east, preferably to an area with no ships around?”

She gazed at me sharply. “Why?”

“You wanted to know if this would be worth your time. If you can’t, Mr. Parker can.” I turned to him. “Mr. Parker, lift us all up in the air, surround us in a bubble of hard air, and then move us all towards the horizon a few times, until we are out over the open ocean.”

“Oh.” He thought about that for a second, and then suddenly we were all shooting up into the air together, accelerating with incredible speed, and then abruptly coming to a stop, ignoring inertia entirely.

I ignored Sersi’s intent gaze as Ben Parker turned around, squinted at the horizon, and then there was a blur of motion, and suddenly Queens was no longer underneath us, and indeed New York City was only a line of lights on the horizon.

“Wow!” whispered Peter at the display of power.

We hopped out three times more, leaving the land way behind. I looked around, and frowned.

“I can’t see if there are any ships around. Can you clear out the clouds, Mr. Parker?” I asked casually.

He waved his hand. Sersi actually hissed as the cloud cover simply vanished clear to the horizon, leaving the unbroken sea below us.

“Looks pretty clear. I don’t see any running lights. Anyone else?” I asked, Mask of Clarity momentarily flicking into being.

There were all negatives. “Oh, good. Mr. Parker, you see all this ocean in front of us down there?”

“Sure!” he replied.

“Could you lift it all a mile in the air, up level with us? Oh, and don’t let the edges below collapse underneath while you do, as that could cause some massive waves.”

Sersi blinked at me. Peter stared. Ben grunted, looking down there.

Then he reached out his hand, closed his fingers slightly, and Sersi almost convulsed.

He lifted his hand, and the ocean rose to meet us.