“Can’t fault that,” Ben Grimm ground out, taking another sip of his not-a-milkshake. “Damn, what is in this?” he asked, although he still kept his voice down.

I pulled the recipe out of my Vest and handed it over to him. He took it with the great care of someone with orange rock for an epidermis.

“Sweet Aunt Petunia!” he muttered softly, looking back and forth from the drink in his hand to the recipe. “I’m drinking this?!”

“You’re a Geoic Avatar, an elemental being. You’ve been eating things for humans and they probably taste like bland goo, going through the motions and pretending it’s fine. Do you keep a bag of sand or ore samples in a private place to snack on when nobody is watching?”

He stared at me for a long moment, back at the drink, and then took another swig, smacking his lips with claps of stone when he was done. “You know somebody like me?” he asked.

“Mr. Hill. You probably know him as The Mountain.”

His blue eyes widened in interest. “He goes up against the Champions and Aerie and stuff a lot out in the West, right?”

“He gets press for that, but he works all over the world.” I gestured at his drink. “He says vanilla and hazelnut.”

“Huh. More like sugar cookies and dark chocolate to me,” he admitted. He eyed the recipe again. “A Mixing Rod. Reed doesn’t much like the magical stuff...”

“You’re an Elemental Avatar. It’s not his problem, it’s yours. Alchemy is the best way to solve your cravings, and if you’ve a different set of stuff you eat, well, par for the course. Get your own pantry if you have to. He’s got the room.”

“Yeah, yeah, he does,” the big orange guy agreed, nodding his head. “You got more recipes like this?” he asked, obviously quite curious.

“A couple dozen. I try new stuff all the time, but it takes some money to work them out right. Energized Elements and stuff are the best to work with, and the research isn’t cheap. It’s like making custom magic Potions and stuff. That recipe there took me about thirty grand to get right, and if I didn’t have custom cookware for the trying, would have been even more.”

“So, you’re an experienced alchemist and cook?” he asked directly.

“Chemistry, alchemy, and cooking have a lot in common,” I smiled. “If you don’t think so, then you probably don’t think making a coffee machine to brew a perfect cup of coffee would be that hard to make.”

“Hrmmm.” He looked around cautiously, then learned forward. “Can you make a good cup of coffee for me?”

I was forced to shake my head. “No. I can make a BAD cup of coffee for you. Still working on the good side. Mr. Hill says the most recent example tastes like motor oil mixed with mud.”

“Hell, I know diner coffee that tastes like that,” Grimm muttered. “I bet he still has one every morning.”

“He does, and I’m getting better. The ratios of stuff I’m dealing with are inside tenths of a percentage. There’s about ten different ingredients, and the heating, the cooling, the acid treatment, when to add what and how much and...” I waved my hand absently. “It’s a work in progress.”

“I’ll pay ya fifty grand when ya get a recipe.”

“It’s alchemy, so you’ll never be able to use a coffee maker. It all has to be done by hand. Upside, a pot of Earth Coffee doesn’t get stale. So, you can make gallons of it and store them up!” I beamed at him.

“Give me something ta tinker with in my spare time.” He didn’t sound adverse to having something to do.

There were sounds of motion down the hall, someone stumbling out of their room and making their way here. A handsome young blond man dressed only in his PJ’s came around the corner, blinking sleepily. “Ben? You okay? I heard you talking – holy crap there’s a girl here!” he blurted out, suddenly waking up and flames coming off his head.

Grimm rolled his eyes, while I picked up a bunch of darker muffins on a pan and inserted them into the freezer, much to everyone’s confusion. “Observant, aren’t ya, flamebrain? Why don’t ya tell the world her hair color while yer at it? I’m sure Stretch and Suzie won’t mind if ya yell it even louder.”

“Oh, crap! But...” he looked back and forth between us, then around the kitchen, and despite himself, sniffed the air. “Is she cooking? It smells... kind of strange.” His eyes locked on me, and he smiled. “Um, what’s your name?”

“Know what pheromones are, sport?” I asked him by way of reply.

“Uh, maybe?”

“Concentrate. You’re feeling my Fiery Heart, mistaking it for physical attraction, and atop the fact your hormones are excitable and I’m a young female, you’re starting to think things you shouldn’t.” Lightning danced over my eyes and hands. “Name’s Dynamo. Go throw some ice water and a shirt on. Your muffins will be ready in ten minutes.”

“My muffins?” I pointed back down the hall, and despite himself, he turned around and stumbled off that way... just as a human head on an impossibly long neck poked around the corner.

Dr. Reed Richards asked, “Johnny? Ben? Ah...”

“Hey, Stretch. Breakfast is getting served a little early if you want to get up,” Grimm offered, waving the hand with the pitcher in it.

I put another set of muffins into the refrigerator.

-------

Five minutes later the whole family was up, including Susan Storm-Richards, wife of Dr. Richards, who was looking a bit disgruntled at the mess I’d made of her kitchen.

I brought out the muffins I’d made for Grimm, held it up over the island as I began to move everything else out of the way, and dropped it.

It clunked when it hit. Everyone blinked.

I brought out a knife of grey metal, stuck it by the handle through a thick length of rubber sized for Grimm’s four-fingered hand, and set it on the countertop, blade up. “Don’t test the edge, it’s adamantine and will shave you. Rounded tip so you can butter safely, of course.”

“Of course.” He picked up the very thick-handled knife, eyed the stop-cross base, and I saw Dr. Richards purse his lips at the thoughtfulness of personal cutlery for his friend like this.

With solemn gravity, he picked one of the muffins, and cut down into it. There was a bit of a hiss of steam, and crunching and falling sounds like sand or pebbles as he cut through it.

“Butter?” he asked warily.

“Probably not, and I didn’t have time to make up its replacement for you.”

“Dip?” he asked, indicating the half-full pitcher.

“No idea. Try it with the second half, and we’ll both learn something.”

He nodded and picked up the muffin. It looked soft, but everyone heard the crunching as he bit into it, and chewed thoughtfully.

“Damn,” he muttered, looking at the bit left in his hand. “Tastes like cinnamon and raisins...”

“Not apple? Meh...” I watched as he ate the remainder delicately, clearly enjoying himself, and then took a careful drink of his milkshake to go with it.

He tilted his head as he looked at nothing thoughtfully. “That... is really inneresting. I don’t know how ta describe it. How does something wet still taste so dry?”

“There are numerous examples of hydrophobic liquids in chemistry,” Reed Richards spoke up quickly. “Possibly a reaction between the unconventional Elements involved?”

“Mebbe.” Grimm reached out, grabbed the other half of the muffin he had cut, and took a bite again, clearly enjoying himself.

I took the second tray of muffins out of the freezer, set them in front of Johnny Storm. They were rimed with ice, yet still looked like baked muffins. I just lifted an eyebrow at him as he hesitated after picking one up. “Am I going to break my teeth on this?” he had to ask.

“Turn your flame on in your mouth,” I said, rolling my eyes.

There was a poof as his head ignited and turned into burning plasma. A little gingerly, he took a bite.

His narrowed eyes popped open, and everyone heard some popping in his mouth as steam escaped. He wasn’t spitting anything out, however, waving around the other half as he jumped off his seat and pranced about, clutching at his mouth as his flames went out, and steam was escaping from his lips and nose.

When he finally stopped, he stared at the still-icy muffin in his hand, then at me. “That was HOT!” he complained to me.

“Well, duh. It was stuck inside an oven at a few thousand degrees. What did you expect it to be while it was baking?”

His mouth worked, but he had no reply to that. I just crossed my arms; he looked at the muffin, back at me, and took another bite.

Grimm shook his head, covering a laugh as he watched Johnny Storm’s antics. “It’s like he hasn’t had hot food before, or sumthin!”

“He probably hasn’t.” I cut one of those muffins in half, spread the butter there on it, and took a bite. Fire flashed in my mouth, ice hissed, steam billowed forth, and the muffin popped audibly. “It is reacting to the natural fire energy inside him with its own. It actually feels hot because it’s using his energy to move past his natural fire resistance threshold. He probably hasn’t tasted anything ‘hot’ since he got his powers. Boiling hot soup would be the same as tepid water, even if he can sense the difference.”

“Extraordinary,” Dr. Richards said, watching me as I went to the refrigerator, got the tray of muffins in there, and took them out to set down deftly before him. “For me?” He sounded quite interested as he looked them over. They looked like just half-a-dozen muffins.

Steam was still coming out my nose, so I just nodded.

With intent scientific demeanor, he cut one in half, looked at what certainly looked like risen dough closely, and after a glance and nod from me, spread some butter on it, and took a bite.

“Oh. Oh, my, that really is different.” He blinked several times. “I didn’t even have to swallow...” He smacked his lips once, and slowly took a smaller bite. The crumbs that clung to his lips liquified and seemed to get sucked right into them.

“A... very unusual morning dining experience,” he announced. He looked at the cup of coffee in his hand, cocked an eyebrow at me, and I nodded again. He dunked it, and watched in fascination as the muffin dissolved perfectly into the coffee.

He took a sip, and his eyes lit up. “My word. Muffin-flavored and textured coffee.” He dropped the rest into his cup without hesitation.

Susan Storm-Richards naturally was eager to try her set, which was in the oven, and had then been moved to the freezer. When I took them out and set them before her, they were air temperature.

“Bite, then inhale.”

She looked at me, then sniffed them deeply, as they had the deepest and most aromatic aroma of all of them. She took a bite of one, inhaled, and promptly started sucking in really hard as her eyes popped wide open.