The sky, where a phoenix of cosmic flame was covering half the hemisphere, its heart occluded by the moon thrown into stark shadow by its presence, and the blue of the sky wiped away in the face of its display.

The red light dissipated, the threat abruptly gone as the wings of the firebird curled inwards on themselves, and fell into nothingness with terrible, final slowness. A wave of loss hit me right in the gut, and I took a breath at the same time the Parkers did.

Including the one on the bed.

We all looked back as Ben Parker looked past us, out at the sky returned to a normal darkening blue.

“What happened?” he muttered, reaching up stiffly to wipe at the tear coming from his eye, a gesture we all basically imitated. “It felt like somebody just died...”

Peter tossed himself on his uncle in a bear hug, almost bawling, while May was a bit slower and only managed to clasp his hand.

“Mr. Parker, I believe the Phoenix of the High Guard just died.”

I was pretty sure everyone in the hemisphere had felt it. Naturally we didn’t know the how or whys of it, but I was pretty sure she was gone.

And then I saw a stream of fire flicker down from infinity, and impact down only a few blocks away.

If it rains, it pours, I swore to myself.

“Peter, hero stuff, going. You stay with your uncle. Nice to meet you, Mr. Parker!” I waved at him as I bolted out of the room.

---

“Who in the world was that?” Ben Parker asked, very interested in the attractive young woman who had just bolted out of his hospital room.

“That is Dynamo, who I work with at the Baxter Building!” Peter explained, finally breaking his relieved hug of his uncle. “And no, she is not my girlfriend!”

“Is she going to need your help?” Ben Parker asked seriously. When Peggy Carter herself had come to their home to talk about their nephew, there was no hiding who he was and what he could do. Ben Parker was completely aware that Peter had a massive guilty conscience and sense of responsibility about what he could do, and didn’t think he was in any shape that required the boy to stick around.

“Uh...” Peter was clearly caught between his need to get involved and his desire to make sure his uncle was okay.

“Go,” Ben waved at him, and Peter’s feet were carrying him towards the door after the young woman before he could protest.

May glided forward to take his other hand. “Such a fright you gave us, Ben. We haven’t been so worried since the time you got shot.” She brought his hand up to feel his face, and he studied the expression on her face as she traced her finger and his hand on his face.

“What’s that look for? Is there something on my face?” he asked, as she continued tracing the zigzag patterns.

There was a mirror on the stand next to his bed. May picked it up and showed his face to him. Ben Parker blinked at the sight of the lightning-bolt patterns spread around his face. “What in the world did this?” he asked, reaching up to his face and feeling nothing there.

--------

Being I was a proven alchemist, and in return for making some stuff for them, Wong and Strange had let me peruse the magical library of the Sanctum Sanctorum.

I was a very quick reader, and my ability to learn any language in an hour, regardless of how complex or alien it was, meant I was actually able to read and translate books that Strange had to rely on the Amulet of Agamotto to decipher for him.

One of the things that was different about this world was the Dragon and the Phoenix.

One was a spirit of knowledge and intellect, inspiring men of science, alchemy, and magic in their research. The other was creation and destruction, emotion and passion, very different, and so they were remarkably opposed.

The Dragons and the Phoenix had been around for thousands of years, and their rivalry and the fallout therefrom was basically why the Vishanti Tradition was so much more eminent.

Phoenixes burned out, all of them. No matter how long they lasted or how powerful they were, the emotional pressure of a cosmic entity became too much, and they went crazy. If they were lucky, they were put down before too much happened.

When they died, a new Phoenix was chosen by the Phoenix Force, and they all shared something in common...

I came swooping in on the center of the fire. Someone was burning in the center of a cul-de-sac, clutching at their head and screaming, while the stone popped, cracked, glowed red-hot, and fused solid all around them.

More to the point, someone else was already there as I glided in, landed on a rooftop, and skidded down the air to the ground on the opposite side of them.

Bald head, wheelchair. Guy made of ice. Brawny guy built like a gorilla, starting to grow blue fur. Handsome blond fellow with angelic-style wings. Tall kid with a glowing red-lensed visor on, giving him a one-eyed look.

It looked like the ice guy had tried to dampen the flames down, and it hadn’t helped out at all. The figure at the center of the flames was impossible to see clearly, but the color of those flames was unmistakable.

There was a house nearby with a hole blasted out of the side of it, and what were probably the parents of the person inside the flames staring out in astonishment and fear.

Xavier was probably trying to reach the new Phoenix, but just adding to the cacophony of minds in their head from massively boosted telepathy.

I snorted as I reached into my Masspack and started forwards.

“Dynamo!” Xavier called out in warning. “Do not get any closer! Those flames are incredibly...” he trailed off as I stepped directly into them and ignored them completely, blue and red flames flittering around me in reaction as they did nothing.

Quite casually, I dropped the circlet of magnapsium on the girl’s head.

The screaming stopped abruptly. The wild flaring of the flames that were threatening to explode there smoothed out and dimmed down instantly to a mere simmering.

The young woman there clutching her head, her fingers clasping the circlet like a lifeline and tears running from her eyes, looked up at me in shock as residual flames puffed away.

“Good evening!” I greeted her, sitting down in front of her calmly, as if nobody from the surrounding houses or the bunch of mutants over there existed. “The name is Dynamo, you may have heard of me.” I pulled off the mask easily enough, and a foot of dark hair vanished with it. “You, young sir, have several problems. Are you ready to listen to me?”

She swallowed as she stared at me, sitting there an inch above the red-hot asphalt with some sparks or two drawing attention to the fact, and nodded.

“The Phoenix of the High Guard just died,” I informed her, and she blinked. “If you know any legends about the Phoenix, a Phoenix is reborn after they die.” I swirled my hands and pointed at her.

“M-me?” she gasped in shock, pointing at herself, and then looking down in stunned amazement. “What-?” she gaped, looking at her hands and chest.

“Know anything about human genetics?” I inquired of her. “Specifically, that men have a pretty blank y-chromosome?”

“XX vs XY?” she remembered under my prodding gaze.

“It’s believed among some magical traditions that the reason for that blank chromosome is the Phoenix. When it chooses a host, it writes a bunch of extra stuff onto that blank Y chromosome, turning them into a Phoenix Avatar.

“So, you’re not the first. In fact, all the Phoenixes were born male.”

She gaped at me in disbelief, but I just kept her eyes, and the hands I was slowly squeezing in reassurance.

“Now, you have a not-small problem, in that you are the Avatar of the Phoenix, a cosmic force of great power. You know, you’re potentially as powerful as the Phoenix of the High Guard.”

“Miss Dynamo, this may not be the best time...” Prof. Xavier called out.

“Shut it, Baldie. This is the Phoenix, and they deserve to know every single thing that was done to them. If you don’t like it, piss off.”

The expression on his face at being told off was worth it, and even this new Phoenix looked amazed I’d done so.

“Ignore him. He’s not a Phoenix and has a waaaaay smaller worldview.” Her face twitched in amusement despite herself.

“So, what you have to do first is control the Phoenix power running through you, which, you notice, you aren’t doing.” She looked down at the flames burning over herself, the asphalt bubbling, and swallowed. “This is because the Phoenix is very, very big, and you are very, very small.

“So, what we are going to do is formalize the relationship along some magically significant lines. This is akin to giving you training wheels for your bike, instead of dumping you into a motocross rally and telling you to go for it. You all ready to begin?” I put her hands together and smiled reassuringly.

She swallowed. “What... what do I need to do?” she asked faintly.

“We’re going to streamline this agreement you have with the Phoenix along the lines of a Warlock Pact,” I told her calmly. “The main difference is the Pact has already been imposed on you, so you can’t refuse it, but you CAN control how it gets opened up to you.

“You won’t have access right away to all the shit the previous Phoenix can do. On the other hand, you won’t blow away the hemisphere if you lose control.” I held up my thumb and forefinger a small distance apart. “Lose a little, gain a little.”

She swallowed again, but her face hardened. “Getting some training time seems like a really smart thing to have...” she agreed slowly, and released one hand to touch the circlet on her head. “What is this?”

“It’s made out of magnapsium, Mind-Energized Manganese. It keeps out all external psionic, psychic, telepathic, divinatory, dream, phantasmal, and other influences from reaching the mind. It’s why you can’t hear Baldie’s voice in your head right now, trying to get you to calm down and leave with him.” I waved his presence off as if irrelevant. “He’s got no idea how to deal with the power-boost of a Phoenix, so don’t worry about him. You were picking up thoughts from a huge area around you, and it was overwhelming, right?”

“Y-yes.” She bit her lip and shuddered despite herself. “It’s hard enough not hearing them at the best of times...”

“No telepathic stuff in either direction while that’s on. However, your link to the Phoenix is effectively stamped on your soul, so no way to block that without killing your soul off. So, you’re still on fire.”

“How... do I stop burning? Why aren’t you burning?” she blurted out.

“I happen to be immune to extremes of heat and cold. I am a pretty accomplished alchemist!” I raised my chin proudly. “Fully qualified to help you swear a Pact and get this silly flame under control. You ready to start?”

She nodded slowly, amazed. “What do I have to do?”