So sorry for the late update! My editor and I are in our final term for year 12 and things have been getting super busy. So…sorry!

I own nothing except for Alena.

ENJOY!

…or not...

Things have been a little hectic since we began living with Reed in the Baxter Building; we were all busy trying to figure out a way to reverse the genetic mutation that has happened to us.

But to do that, we have to first understand the extent of our powers.

Reed and I have begun running tests on everyone. Reed would be conducting the experiments, which left me to monitor everyone's vitals so I can determine just how far everyone can go before they suffer any major health problems.

Johnny was the first of us to be tested. Reed, Sue and I were in a control room above the testing chamber while Jonny was locked in a steel box, one thick enough to contain his little heat problem.

But it was Johnny, nothing about him was little. Wait, what?

"He's heating from his core," Reed observed, eyes widened in concentration and fascination.

"And his vitals are completely normal," I added in, surprised.

Sue immediately wrote down all the notes that Reed and I would throw at her so Reed can properly determine the best course of action to take.

"His skin doesn't burn," I murmured, causing Reed and Sue to look at me, "When we were up in the mountains, I noticed that the fire didn't burn him. It burned his clothes. But it didn't burn his skin. I've seen cases where being completely doused in fire can result in third degree burns. Sometimes, they're even fourth degree burns. But with Johnny, there's no evidence of even a first-degree burn. It's almost as though his skin is completely fire retardant. Wish I could say the same about his clothes."

"Fourth degree burns?" Sue repeated in surprise.

"Believe it or not, they can happen, along with fifth and sixth degree burns," I said, happy to explain, "People just rarely hear about them because some people don't even survive third degree burns. Fourth degree burns go beyond the skin and into the underlying muscle, tendon and ligament. If a patient survives a fourth degree burn, they would need skin grafting. But there have been more times where fourth degree burns are fatal than they aren't. Fifth and sixth degree burns are only most often diagnosed during an autopsy. Everything that's between the skin and the bone is destroyed. It's very rare that someone would survive a burn of that degree. If a miracle happened and they did survive, immediate amputation of the affected area would be required."

"How do burns even get to that degree?" Reed asked, astonished.

"You'd be surprised," I remarked, "I can't say I would be. Once you've been in the ER for a certain amount of time, it'll take a lot to surprise you."

I turned away from Johnny's heart rate and blood pressure quickly to check his core temperature. My eyes widened when I saw the gauge read 4000 Kelvin and climb even higher.

"It's hotter than I anticipated," Reed muttered.

I pressed the button that would allow me to speak to Johnny in the test chamber, "OK, Johnny. We need you to back it down."

"I CAN GO HOTTER!" Johnny called back.

"Johnny, just back it down," Sue pleaded.

Johnny, as per usual, didn't listen to us. Instead, he concentrated on the intensity of his flames and it just kept getting hotter and hotter. Eventually, there was a bright light coming from the test chamber and the three of us had to shield our eyes.

"JOHNNY, BACK IT DOWN RIGHT NOW!" Reed barked.

"JOHNNY!" Sue cried.

Through my squinting, I managed to make out the red button that would turn on the fire extinguishers. Reed made sure he had this installed before Johnny's experiment in case accidents happened or Johnny got too hot and we had to stop the experiment to save everyone in the building…maybe beyond the building too.

When we walked out of the control room and onto the walkway, we heard Johnny's manic laughter.

"Buzzkill! You guys are cramping my style!" Johnny cackled.

I couldn't help but roll my eyes as I surveyed the damage. Everything was covered in the foam from the fire extinguishers. The chamber we had Johnny locked in was, believe it or not, virtually destroyed.

And under the foam, he was naked.

Why is it recently that whenever we get into a situation, he ends up naked?

"Johnny, you were at 4000 Kelvin. Any hotter, you would be approaching Supernova," Sue told him.

"Sweet!" Johnny cheered.

"It's not sweet, you idiot!" I instantly snapped, "Supernova's the temperature of the sun!"

"Not only could you kill yourself. But you could set fire to Earth's atmosphere and destroy all human life as we know it," Reed piped in casually.

That seemed to get to Johnny better than the warnings Sue and I gave him earlier.

"Right. Supernova: bad," Johnny nodded, giving us a thumbs up.

I had to laugh. Johnny looked ridiculous covered in foam. It was even more ridiculous considering he was in his birthday suit.

Ben was next on our list. Out of everyone, Ben was going to be the most challenging mutation to reverse. He was outside when the storm came and he was struck as he was coming back into the Space Station. When the storm took hold of the station, he was still inside the airlock, thus making him the more effected of us all.

"If we're going to identity the source of the mutation, we need to isolate your recombinant DNA so we can activate positional genomes," Reed rambled.

"Huh?" Ben grunted in confusion.

"We need to run a physical on you to see what got zapped," I clarified.

"Oh. Why didn't you just say so?" Ben rolled his eyes.

One thin I learned from working in the hospital. You can speak the full-on scientific terms to other doctors, nurses and pharmacists. However, with people like patients and their families, unless they have high IQs, understand medical terms or are doctors themselves, they wouldn't understand the full-on scientific terms so you would have to lower the vocabulary for them to understand what was wrong with them and why they needed sugary if necessary.

Sue and I had to work together to hook up the x-ray machine and position it in front of Ben's chest. The thing was heavy!

The two of us then joined Reed at the monitor as he began the x-ray on Ben.

It didn't work out so well. It barely penetrated through Ben's chest and it wasn't going to penetrate into Ben's internal organs.

"Oh my God!" I gasped, "His internal organs are completely solid!"

Then the x-ray zoomed in on his heart. We heard the beat of his heart. But it didn't sound like a normal heartbeat. Rather than the 'ba-boom, ba-boom' sound I would normally get when listening to heartbeats through a stethoscope, we heard a 'ca-clunk, ca-clunk'.

"How bad is it?" Ben demanded, "You know I used to smoke."

We decided to move on from the x-rays, realising that we wouldn't get any more than what we got. Earlier, Reed and I had already ruled out doing a blood test and talking his blood pressure. No needle would penetrate through his skin and his arm was too big for the armbands from the machine. Honestly, I'm not even sure if he had any blood running through him anymore and I couldn't figure out a way to find that out for certain. Also, we knew that we didn't need to test his strength. We got a good idea of his strength from the incident on the Brooklyn Bridge.

He'd have to be pretty strong to be able to lift a fire truck to safety.

Instead, we were doing reflexes. However, when Sue was using the usual tools that I would use to test his reflexes, it wasn't enough. He didn't feel anything.

I couldn't help but envy the poor guy. The reflex test is uncomfortable.

"You feel anything?" Sue asked.

"Nope," Ben shook his head.

"OK," Reed sighed before whacking Ben's knee with a hammer.

Ben roared as he kicked his leg, sending the empty chair in front of him flying into the wall opposite, shattering on impact.

"OK. I think we got everything we need," I decreed.

Sue and Reed were quick to agree with me.

Reed wanted to do the experiments on Sue separately, but I still have to give her a physical; the usual blood tests, blood pressure, height, weight.

Everything I would do if I was working in a GP rather than a hospital.

"Everything seems fine," I remarked as I read the results from the blood tests, "Now you just have to go see Reed to determine the extent of your powers."

"Why can't you do it?" Sue asked me, moaning slightly.

"Reed's going to be the one that's going to determine the best course of action to reverse our symptoms. He needs to know everything about your powers so he doesn't make any mistakes. Me? I just need to know how much your powers have affected your health," I clarified, "You're good. Might want to watch your cholesterol a bit, though. Your total cholesterol level is 215 mg/dL. You're in the borderline high range. So watch your sodium."

"I eat healthy," Sue scoffed.

"Yes. But you like to put salt on practically everything. Your total daily sodium intake should be less than 2300 mg per day. Also, choosing and preparing foods with little or no salt is good for you LDL levels and reduces the risk of heart disease," I retorted.

"Wow. I've been having my check-ups via Victor's doctor as part of my employment contract. Maybe I should have been seeing you for a second opinion," Sue remarked.

"I could run circles around some of Victor's doctors any day of the week," I boasted, "Go on. Reed wants to get started."

Sue thanked me again before leaving to go see Reed. I admit. I want to be a fly on the wall for this. I began to walk to the testing area...

When a certain hot-headed male specimen appeared in my path.

"Hey," he greeted.

"Hey," I nodded.

"Hold still," Johnny suddenly said.

I was confused. Then I saw him turn around and I felt the back of my singlet being lifted before feeling the ice pack on my lower back being shifted. Since the incident in the snow, I was told that I had to start wearing ice packs on temperature points of my body (and other places for good measure) to maintain my temperature. When I first put them on, they are frozen stiff and won't move or anything (thanks to Reed freezing them in liquid nitrogen). Whenever I would start to get dizzy, I would go to Reed and he would have another icepack prepared.

"Thanks," I said.

I hadn't even noticed that it had been falling off.

"It feels a little warm," Johnny observed, "Is Reed testing anyone right now?"

"Sue," I confirmed.

"Don't think he'd mind us interrupting. You need another pack," Johnny decreed.

He immediately began steering me towards Reed's lab.

"You're more concerned than Ben," I pointed out, "And he's been watching me like a hawk for the entire time we've been in this mess."

"He doesn't know you like I do," Johnny shrugged, "I don't think anyone does really."

"Mum used to," I retorted.

Johnny froze, knowing that my mother was still a hard topic for me to brig up.

I was six when she was killed. She had been a witness to a rape and murder on her way home from work. She did what any person could; reported the incident and the man's description to the police. Unfortunately, the guy in turn was a hired janitor at the police station and had gone through the file containing her information and what she'd said. He'd claimed her as her new victim less than two weeks later. Of course, the bastard was caught not long after that. He was one of the last to be executed before the Supreme Court ruled last year that the death penalty in New York was unconstitutional.

It happened a few months before Johnny's mother died in her accident and three years before his father's arrest for killing his loan shark. It was in self-defence. But his father hadn't attempted to fight the charges and get off on the grounds of self-defence or any other way he legally could have. That's why he was in prison. As far as I knew, he was still in prison.

"Still hard for you to bring up/" Johnny asked, earning a nod, "How is your family?"

"Virgil misses you and still hates me. Dad's coping as best as he can. Kate is doing well with the bookstore," I answered briskly.

My dad married Kate two years after mum died. They met when I went into her bookstore wanting to buy a book six months after she died and the two hit it off immediately. At first, I was wary. Mum's death was still fresh and it looked like he was trying too hard to replace her. However, Kate took me out for a bonding day so we could get to know each other and proved me wrong. It turned out that Kate had lost her mother at a young age too and when her father remarried a few years later, his new wife tried too hard to be her mother's replacement. It ultimately drove a wedge between them as Kate, like me, was extremely close to her mother before her death from breast cancer. Kate told me that she knows that she will never replace my mother and will never try to. Instead, she told me that she would be caring for me on her behalf.

When I was eleven, my brother Virgil was born. Virgil idolised Johnny the moment they met. That may be because Johnny took it upon himself to act like a surrogate older brother to him. When he heard that Johnny and I were on break, he took it hard. Virgil hated me when I went away to college, even more when I became a doctor. For him, this gave him another reason to hate me.

I could only imagine what he'd think of me now with my ice problem.

"Is your dad coping with the wheelchair?" Johnny asked worriedly, "I'm still more than happy to get my friend to build a ramp for him."

Dad was in a car accident during my freshman year at Harvard. He was struck by a drunk driver who ran a red light. The accident resulted in him becoming a paraplegic after his spine was severed and he was consequently paralysed from the waist down. He had to take an early pension due to being unable to work at the hospital. Not just because of the paralysis. It was also because of the PTSD that followed.

"They moved into a one-level house with no stairs, not even to get into the house or to the yard," I clarified.

"Well, I'm going to talk to Virgil about the way he treats too," Johnny decreed.

"You don't need to," I immediately objected, "Virgil's my brother. I can deal with him."

"It's my job to protect you," Johnny retorted, "I'm your fiancé."

"You can't say that anymore, Johnny," I reminded him, "We may be on a break. But we can't go around saying that we're engaged anymore, remember?"

Johnny sighed, his jaw locked as he turned his head to the side and refused to meet my gaze. He opened his mouth before closing it, shaking his head. He was battling with himself. It wasn't hard to see, considering how well I knew him. So I turned to leave.

"Alena, you are my best friend," Johnny blurted. I froze and turned back around. He met my gaze steadily, "Today, I give myself to you. Using the love that we share as a vessel, through the pressures of the present and the uncertainties of our future, I can promise that you will always have my deepest love, my fullest devotion, and my most tender care." He paused, taking in a breath, "I promise to love you, to always strive to encourage and inspire you, to laugh with you and to comfort you in times of sorrow and struggle. I promise to love you in good times and in bad, when life seems easy and also when times become difficult, when our love is simple and when things become complicated. I promise to honour you and to always hold our love for each other in highest regard. These things I pledge to you today and all the days of our lives together."

His jaw snapped shut the instant he was finished. My eyes widened. Where has he pulled that from?

Wait a minute. That sounded like...

"It was what I was going to say to you at the Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers when the Justice of the Peace would ask us to say our vows to each other on the day we would become man and wife," Johnny revealed, "I had my vows to you memorised the moment I asked you to marry me. When the three months are up, you may decide that you still want to marry me. You may decide to end it. Whatever happens, I will always love you. I may have dated other girls before I found you again. But you're the first one I ever felt something for. You're my first love and I intend for you to be the only one."

Damn my emotions. He always knew how to touch my heart and, occasionally, make me cry.

For the first time since that event, I reached up and kissed him. I hadn't realised how much I missed this until I felt my back collide with the wall and his body being pressed against mine.

He really does have a thing of pinning me against walls. A dominant aspect, not that I minded.

He was demanding and ruthless, as though it would be the lsat time we would kiss. He wanted to commit this to memory. I had to admit. I do too. His lips descended onto my neck and I grasped his biceps tightly as he quickly found that spot that would drive me crazy and want more.

FLASH!

We quickly broke apart panting heavily. Somehow, our powers activated in the middle of our little make out session. As a lot of people know, fire and ice don't go well together.

As a result, our clothes were burnt and wet.

At least Johnny's shirt wasn't completely burnt unlike mine, which was completely destroyed.

I had to wear a lace bra today, didn't I?

We both took off to find Reed and Sue.

"HEY, GUYS!" I called as we walked in.

"I think we have a serious problem," Johnny proclaimed.

Reed immediately came over to give us a check-over. Sue and I locked eyes momentarily. She was having the same feelings I had. I could see it in her eyes.

We both had a moment with the men we love.

And that moment was destroyed.

I was actually tempted to write a smut. But the chapter was getting long enough for my taste. Maybe next chapter… ;)

Thank you, Miss Daisy Dukes, for making this chapter even more awesome. To all the ladies there, admit it. You fantasised yourself in Alena's position.

BYE!