Susan Storm watched her younger brother leave and turned back to me. “Something going on?” she asked directly.

I lifted off the magnapsium circlet again. Phoenix looked at me, back at Susan, and just sighed. “Susan Storm-Richards, the Invisible Woman. Meet the new Phoenix,” I introduced them.

Susan’s eyebrows went into her hairline. “Reed’s trying to figure out just what that was all about. She really did die...” She touched a com on her chest. “Reed, you can get off the phone and come to the family room. Right now.” There was a special note to her voice, which I assumed would get his attention.

True enough, a long leg extended into the room out of a pipe in the wall, and drew the rest of Reed Richards after it to rapidly reform. Mr. Fantastic could access any room in the building extremely quickly if he had need to through the concealed network of pipes, fast enough to have surprised several people who had managed to get inside.

It was still plenty weird to see him flow out of the wall that way, but hey, super-hero world.

“Susan. I presume this is about our new guest? Dyna,” he nodded at me after taking in the situation.

“This is the new Phoenix. Phoenix, Dr. Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four.”

“Well now.” He cordially extended a hand a yard out, and she shook it calmly, bemused, before she turned to Susan and belatedly offered the same. “A pleasure to meet you, young lady,” Dr. Richards greeted her.

I held up a finger. “Before you both begin, there is a fact about all Phoenixes that you are probably unaware of. All Phoenixes are born male.” They both blinked. “The control factors for the Phoenix Force’s avatar are imprinted onto the blank areas of the Y-chromosome and result in the gender change. An hour ago, the Phoenix was a teenaged young man.”

Her eyes darted back and forth between them, reading their emotions. “Oh, and she’s a mutant, and was being recruited by Xavier for his little dream squad of elitist born Powered. Telekinesis and telepathy?” I inquired for verification.

“I, I really don’t have great control over them... but yes.” She fidgeted with the circlet I’d put into her other hand, but relaxed despite herself, even looking a little odd at the expressions on the faces of the two of them.

“We live in such a crazy world,” Sue said soothingly, voice full of understanding. “I think I might have had it worse than you, when I couldn’t control my invisibility. I had the feeling I might never be seen again...”

“I was basically almost a puddle of protoplasm,” Reed agreed with a nod, looking away as a dark wave literally rippled across his face. “Johnny still spontaneously ignites at night. Ben can’t even look human anymore, let alone like the man he was.

“Phoenix, you can stay here as long as you like,” he stated openly, and there was a moment of mischief in his eyes. “I learned how to do this from the Skrulls.”

My own eyebrow arched as he stood next to his wife, and his form rippled. Phoenix slapped her hand to her mouth, which didn’t stop the laugh as suddenly Reed was a mirror image of his wife, albeit with the streaked brown hair and eyes instead of blonde and blue.

“Reed!” Sue protested, elbowing him, and Mr. Fantastic just laughed, even his voice higher by an octave. He snapped back into his own form almost instantly.

“Let me be the first to say that you can stay as long as you like, and you’ll have no problems or judgement from us,” Reed assured her. “While I will be happy to run any tests you permit me to, I will also say that I am neither an experienced psion nor conversant in the abilities of the Phoenix.” He sighed despite himself, knowing he was losing an incredible opportunity. “If you like, I will contact Paragon on your behalf and ask where you might be sent for proper training in the control of ALL your powers. I suspect he will recommend you be sent to the Tribes or Russia, especially for your psionic control.”

“But... didn’t you limit my Phoenix powers?” she asked me, turning to me in surprise, which also got the Richards looking at me in amazement.

“I graduated them, instead of having them all dumped on you full-force,” I corrected her. “You can unlock each stage as you go, instead of battling to control using them consciously or not.” I pointed at the Richards. “Can you feel it on them? The control? Miss Storm’s natural state is equally visible and not. She’s constantly maintaining a low level of control to stay visible.

“Dr. Richards is literally made of elastics. If he doesn’t maintain control, he’ll just sag and fall into a mound of goo on the ground.

“If you look at their return from space and how long it took them to come back in public, it was more than three months. It took them that long just to control things to be ‘normal’.

“They are both totally aware of and sympathetic to everything you are going through. In terms of mindset and understanding, this is the best place you can be.” I smiled slightly. “Even Johnny. You saw him lose control of his flame, and I can tell you’re afraid of the same. Someone who can understand that same fear is probably the best thing that can happen for both of you.”

“My little brother is a party animal and socializer who loves being a celebrity,” Susan agreed drily. “But he hasn’t seriously dated anyone, or gone back to take public classes, for a reason. He still bursts into flame at night sometimes...” She shook her head.

“Susan goes invisible,” Reed said softly, stepping up behind her and his arms extending to twine around her. “And sometimes I just go limp and all I can do is hold on to something...” He and Susan tapped their heads together, leaning into one another. I noted how his deformed softly to accept his wife.

Phoenix turned to look at me. “I can stay here,” she said softly. “This, this will really help!”

“I imagine your luggage all went up in flames, so let’s go get the guest room set up for a stay, and tomorrow we can make the glorious time-suck of womanly doom...”

“Clothes shopping!” Susan and I exclaimed together, both of us rolling our eyes theatrically. Reed made an exasperated noise despite himself, but couldn’t help smiling, either.

-----

“There is another problem,” I told Reed, as Susan took over the tour and I took over the cooking with aplomb. About to head off to make some more calls, Reed instead turned around and sat down to watch and listen.

“A problem?” he asked archly, waiting patiently.

“Reference sources, the libraries of Dr. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum. Alternate reality reports and observations recorded as potential futures in books gained from those realities by extra-dimensional entities. A lot of it is irrelevant and very different, but...” I heaved a heavy sigh as my hands churned the batter for the noodle-maker up at inhuman speed.

A guy like Dr. Richards, you had to have your references in place, or personal experience to back things up.

“Go on,” he said, intrigued.

“This pattern, on a person’s face.” The holo-emitter on my left bracelet winked on, showing the pattern on a blank face. “It is a sign of cosmic significance, and means the creation of literally the most powerful person on the planet.”

He studied it, his brow furrowing. “What does it portend?”

“The first discovery of our universe by a grown Beyonder, and the creation of a Molecule Man.”

He studied me as I liquified the dough with my actions, and said nothing as I began loading it into the noodle-maker. The chop suey veggies would follow quickly.

“I have no frame of reference for the significance of that,” he admitted.

“A Beyonder is a creature of another reality that is capable of molding reality around itself at a cosmic scale. Literally, they can obliterate a solar system with the wave of a hand.”

His eyes grew hard. “That is... quite powerful,” he agreed.

“A Molecule Man represents about eighty percent of that power. Basically, they are a mortal soul being brought into a cosmic state by uncontrolled exposure to a Beyonder. From our standpoint, their power is limited only by their ability to visualize and comprehend that power.

“It generally starts off when they realize they have the ability to control atoms and molecules: moving them around, combining them, taking them apart. Then they start testing how much they can control...”

“And we can’t comprehend the limit of that control,” Dr. Richards said softly. “That is exceptionally dangerous, Dynamo. They could... wipe out the Earth with a strong thought?”

“And put it right back together again,” I nodded.

“And you know who this person is?” he asked me seriously.

“Yes. Peter Parker’s role model and inspiration, his uncle Benjamin Parker. The incident at the Hudson Atomic Plant earlier today involved him.”

His brown eyes flickered, placing the report. “What happened?” he pressed for details.

“From what I read in that book salvaged from elsewhere, something they did there accidentally poked open a tiny hole to the Beyonder dimension, and Ben Parker was right there. He probably saw a floating point of light, and looked inside.

“There was contact, feedback, the accident, and now here we are.”

Reed Richards was silent for a long moment, pondering many approaches to this problem. “A violent reaction to this problem is not advisable, I take it.”

“Pissing off a good man is never a good idea, no. He doesn’t know what he can do yet, and pushing him, well, it’s a good way to lose the planet.”

He nodded agreement. “Peter speaks well of his aunt and uncle. An open and frank discussion, then? If this is truly a cosmic event...” he looked up at the sky. “Is this related to the death of the Phoenix?”

“I’m not the kind of person who believes in that level of coincidence among beings of that stature. The Phoenix Force is about on par with a Beyonder.”

“The Force, not the avatar,” he correctly picked out. “That is literally a Gods in Heaven moment, then.” He trailed off. “Are we going to NEED him?” he asked softly.

“Yes.”

He tried to mask it, but I could see it in his eyes. We were both hideously smart, and so the trouble we were capable of visualizing was equally high. He was privy to conversations with Paragon and such, he knew of some of the threats that were out there. That we would need someone who could defend against such threats...

“Perhaps I should be reading some of Strange’s library,” he mused beneath his breath.

“You’ve been doing research on dimensional portals, right?” He started, glancing at me. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. I’ve noticed the Interdiction field coming down when you’re in the lab, and when I checked it, it was obvious you had turned it off.” My tone was a little on edge. “I suggest you stop that until you confer with the most eminent expert of dimensional travels and natives thereof on the planet, who lives right down in Greenwich Village, instead of blundering along on your own.”

I glared at him, and he had something of the grace required to lower his eyes. “I’m an alchemist,” I went on. “Science and magic are just two different sets of rules to me. I know you want to be the first to have a scientifically viable dimensional travel methodology worked out. On the other hand, magical means to do the same have been known and employed for literally millennia. You not conferring with the resident experts in the field about such things is literally inviting catastrophe into your home.

“By which I mean the whole planet of Earth. If I’m right, you don’t have a target destination, because you don’t know how to target the thing yet, right?”