Never before have I posted two chapters in two days. I guess my muses have been very active lately.
"She's asleep." Sue said softly, entering the living room.
The strange woman had been out cold for three hours. When she woke up again she freaked out and tried to attack Reed once more.
Ben had tried to grab hold of her again, but she had managed to maneuver away from him, attempting to get at Reed.
Johnny reached her before she had a change to get to Reed, who was too shocked to consider stopping her himself.
He got hold of her wrist and restrained her, wrapping his arms firmly around her trashing limps. He almost immediately let go though, because as soon as his hands made contact with her bare upper arms a sizzling sound came and steam seemed to come out of nowhere. Or from her to be more precise.
He stared in shock at his own hands, as Ben ran past him and restrained the girl again.
This time she had stayed awake and, even though Sue thought it was horrible, they had tied her hands behind her back and her legs together.
Half an hour later, when she had stopped crying, they managed to get her to talk.
"I was the assistant of Von Doom. One day I woke up like this. Von Doom explained everything to me." At this she looked accusingly at Reed, so much hate in her eyes. "He told me that after you returned from space and became these 'superheroes' you tried to recreate the storm in one of Von Dooms labs. The whole experiment exploded and Von Doom was affected. I was affected too and Von Doom promised me to do what he could to change me back. He couldn't, so he locked me up in the underground labs of the Von Doom building."
Sue gasped, shocked that Von Doom would lie like that, and shocked that he would lock her up. She added:"I didn't even know there was underground labs in the Von Doom building.."
The girl laughed bitterly at her. "Guess he didn't trust you very much then, did he? Obviously he could trust none of you! And apparently you can't be trusted!"
"That's a lie!" Johnny had had enough of her undeserved judgment and hate towards them. "Reed never tried to recreate the storm in Von Dooms labs and we never betrayed him, he betrayed us!"
Johnny's t-shirt started smoking. He'd been so angry that he unconsciously had heated up.
Sue put a restraining hand on his shoulder and murmured
"Stop it Johnny! She's finally talking to us; we need to hear what she has to say! Maybe we can find out. what happened to her." Johnny kept glaring at the girl and shrugged Susan's hand off of his shoulder, but didn't say anything else.
"Please continue." Sue motioned for her to continue.
She continued her tale.
"It was for my own best of course, I knew that. I knew he did it to help me. To protect me. You see, unlike you, I'm not able to 'control' my 'superpowers'" She sneered 'super powers' as if it hurt her to call it that.
"He always told me that I would be better off dead and I agreed with him. He was very good to me. Took care of me, fed me and made sure I was well enough. And then YOU killed him."
The fantastic four looked shocked down at her. Reed crouched down and made eye contact with her, determined to get some answers.
"Was he the only person who knew about you?" he asked softly. She looked away, staring hard at the ground.
"That's none of your business."
"Why can't you control your powers?" Johnny questioned, as usual forgetting any sense of etiquette and tact.
Her eyes shot lightning at him and she started shouting again at them again.
"I can't! What do you want me to say? I simply can't! I can't turn off my powers like YOU and I can't control them either!" Water started to drip from her again and the water pipes in the sink started making ominous sounds as if affected by her mood. "I haven't been in contact with water for YEARS, because of YOU! Do you think I look like this by choice?" She pointed out. They all once again were reminded of how much of a mess she was.
She started sobbing and crying again, gasping and salivating. She looked broken and possessed as she was there; crouched on the ground water falling from her pitiful sounds escaping her lips.
They moved her to the guestroom and Susan watched over her until she fell asleep.
"How is she?" Reed worriedly asked her.
"She's going to be fine, I think." Susan sat tiredly at the dinner table. "It's just horrible what he did to her."
"Did you give her a sedative?"
"yes."
"I think we should examine her while she's asleep. Figure out what's wrong with her."
Sue looked affronted at this suggestion.
"Reed you can't just examine her while she's asleep! What if she doesn't want to be examined? That is a huge invasion of someone's privacy!" Johnny and Ben joined them at the table, both wanting to be part of this conversation.
"What other choice do we have? We need find out how she got those powers and we need to know how her powers work. For her own sake."
"Also, I'd like to know, why she started steaming, when I touched her." Johnny pointed out.
Hours later they stood huddled over several of Reeds computers, documents taking up the space on the table, the computers weren't already occupying They were all in Reeds laboratory looking at the many screens and papers.
"Her powers are definitely the ability to control water." Susan clarified, pointing at one of the screens, which informed them that, even though a normal human consists of seventy percent of water, she was made from ninety percent of water.
"No, I think she's able to absorb water. If she could control it, she wouldn't have looked like that. Also, she said that she hadn't been in contact with water for years." Reed corrected. "It makes sense. Her body absorbs the water as soon as it hits her skin."
"That's why she looks to gross? She can't wash herself?" Sue hit Johnny's shoulder. "Ouch."
"That doesn't explain why she believes that locking her up was for her own good, though." Ben reminded them.
"I might be able to answer that," Susan said, holding up a document showing them a picture of her brain and several notes concerning her condition.
"Her brain and body shows signs of a type of radiation I don't recognize. I think Victor was trying to meddle with her memories. I don't think he succeeded though. That's why he did this." Sue pointed at the picture of her brain, "You can see that the area of the brain which usually controls emotions, feelings, common sense and the ability to judge is damaged."
"Which means?"
"That she's an emotional nerve wreck. She is not able to control her own feelings; she's got a complete lack of common sense and is not able to judge correctly. This makes her very vulnerable and easily persuaded. She is easily convinced what is right and wrong. If Victor has been telling her that locking her up was for her own good, she would believe it instantly. This also means that she would believe just about anything he told her."
Ben picked up the paper and read the analysis himself.
"So she's basically not able to judge anything by herself?"
"Exactly" Sue nodded. "He's probably been telling her for years that it was Reeds fault she's like that. That's why she hates him."
"I think it's safe to assume that she, somehow, was onboard that space station when the cosmic storm hit. I also think that she wasn't supposed to be there, or Victor brought her along, even though she didn't have the right qualifications to space travel. I don't think he wanted anyone to know about her, or that she was affected by the storm too." He stared hard at the screen, willing it to tell him what had happened to the girl.
"I don't think she got any treatment after she was exposed, unlike us. This might be why she can't control her powers. Also, look at this survey of her body's condition." Reed said and drew the others attention back towards the computer screen he was in front of. "Her body shows signs of malnutrition and it looks like she was hurt physically. He might've been using her for experiments."
"Or, he might've just beaten her up for his own amusement."
"Johnny!" Sue looked accusingly at him.
"No Sue, I think Johnny might be right. He could've easily used her as his fall guy when he was angry. According to this, she's been exposed to electrical shock."
"He's been using his powers on her!"
"Yes. Perhaps when he first started using them he wanted to find out how it worked on humans."
None of the four heroes said anything for a long time. Reed felt incredibly guilty. He knew that he wasn't to blame entirely, but still felt partly responsible for the way she'd been treated. Sue was absolutely horrified with what had happened to the poor girl, Ben felt a deep sympathy for her and Johnny still wondered how she had started to steam, when he touched her.
"That is one sick dude." Johnny commented. His comment was ignored and Reed moved on to a more scientifical subject.
"Her powers are similar to yours Johnny. They're both one of the four elements. Also hers come from inside just like yours. You don't need to be near any fire when in need of your powers, you simply create fire yourself. She consumes any water she touches and stores it in her body for later use. My guess is that she's been consuming water from the air for years, with out knowing."
"But how can she contain so much water?" Ben gruffly questioned.
"Because of atoms."
"What?" Johnny looked confused at them.
Susan sighed loudly.
"Everything, Johnny, is made from atoms. Atoms are very, very small particles. They have an outer shell and a core, but mostly they consist of nothing. Not even air, just plain nothing. When she consumes the water, the nothingness is removed and only the shell, core, protons and neutrons remain. This allows her to contain a huge amount of water at a time, simply because the water shrinks."
"English, please." Johnny requested.
"If you take a kitchen sponge and squeeze, what happens?"
"All the air leaves it?"
"And?"
"..it becomes smaller?"
"Exactly!" Sue proclaimed, "Any unnecessary space is removed from the atoms. For example, if you removed all the unnecessary space from the atoms of an entire football field, it would be smaller than a matchbox."
"So I could basically walk around with a football field in my pocket? Awesome!"
"No, it would still weigh the same as a normal football field." Reed interjected.
"Then how some she doesn't weigh several tons?" Ben put the papers back on the table and looked questioningly at Reed and Sue.
Reed turned back towards the screen and frowned at it.
"I don't know. The only logical explanation is that the water somehow looses its weight too. But I don't know how it's done."
"So, why did she sizzle, when I touched her?" Johnny leaned back in his seat, readying himself for one of Reeds long monologues.
"Your powers are both one of the four elements. And they are also the two opposite elements. Fire and Water has always reacted, when it came in contact with each other. My guess is that your fire and her water fought against each other. Maybe fought is too strong a word.. They simply reacted upon coming into contact with their opposite element. Her water became steam, because your fire was stronger than her water."
"What if my fire wasn't stronger than her water? What would've happened then?"
"I'm not exactly sure. When she's awake, we'll question her further and find out more about all of this. We need to find out where she got her powers from and why Von Doom would make up a story like that."
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