Chapter Four

Stella regained some consciousness. She was well aware that she hurt all over, and had no idea why. She wanted to wake up, but sleep felt so good. So she kept her eyes closed and listened to the people talking around her bedside.

"Do you think she's okay?" Stella heard a man talking. His voice seemed familiar, but she couldn't quite place it.

"She was extremely over heated, and dehydrated." Another man spoke. "And her pulse is, through the roof, 200 beats a minute, that can't be right."

"How hot did you go, Johnny?" A woman spoke this time.

"At what temperature does rock melt?" The first man—it was Johnny—sounded reprehensible.

"Johnny!" The woman spoke again. "You must have been at over 1500 Kelvin. You could have killed her."

"It was only for a minute. And I didn't want her to get crushed," Johnny returned. What the hell were they talking about? Her pulse? Rock? Kelvin? Crushed? None of it seemed to make sense. The voiced trailed away and she supposed that she was left alone.

'Time to wake up, Stella,' she told herself, and slowly, grudgingly, peaked her eyes open. The light was bright and blurred her vision. She spotted a large orange blob across the room. 'Good Stella, focus on the blob.' She coached herself mentally. And then the blob took shape. The shape of a large craggy man...what the...? Stella shot up in bed, rubbing her eyes before it registered that she was, in fact, looking at a very large, orange, human-like...THING.

"Good morning," The Thing said in a rough voice. And she screamed.

The girl moved so fast Ben hardly had time to react. She grabbed the vase from the nightstand and chucked it at him. He jumped up, getting out of the way, as she leapt off the bed.

"Now wait one minute," he began as she grabbed the broom from the corner. She swung it at him, and smacked him in the head—which usually wouldn't have phased him but she came back around and hit him on the other side of the head so fast it was almost unreal. Then she swung the broom around again and hit him in the gut, just hard enough to set him off balance and he tripped on his own feet, hitting the ground hard.

The floor shook as The Thing toppled to the ground. Stella rushed from the room and ran out the door and ran into something.

"Careful," a woman's voice warned, she sounded flustered. Stella turned to look and found only a bunch of floating clothes. She screamed again, running down the hall. She looked back in time to see a pretty blond woman appear in the clothing. But she did not see the railing that she ran into and flipped over. She yelped again, finding herself falling, only to be caught by a pair of very long arms.

They pulled her back up over the rail and set her down gently on the upper floor where she found herself facing a dark-haired man. Stella gave a shout of surprise, trying desperately to pull away, but only managed to entangle herself further in, what was essentially, the man. He let go of her, and she turned to head for the stairs when she bumped into a third person. She was shrieking in terror and beating against the man's chest as he tried desperately to hold her against him.

"Stella," he started comfortingly. "It's okay Stella, it's me. It's me Johnny." Stella looked up into Johnny's face and clung to him desperately.

"Oh God, Johnny, we've got to get out of here," she said franticly trying to pull him towards the stairs. He pulled her back into him.

"No, it's okay Stella," he tried to assure her, holding her face in his hands.

"No!" She insisted. "Those people..."

"I know," he said, as the rest of the Fantastic Four gathered behind him. "Stella, I want you to meet my sister—Sue Storm—her fiancé—Reed Richards—and Ben Grimm."

"You know these people?" She asked, astonished. Johnny nodded. "But he...and she...and he—"

"We all have our little oddities," he admitted calmly, and snapped his fingers. His thumb caught fire and Stella stared and took a step back in shock. He snapped them again and the fire was gone. "Stella," Johnny began. "We were in an accident."

"What kind of accident?" Stella insisted hysterically. Johnny looked over to his companions before replying:

"You may want to sit down for this."

Johnny sat her down, and with help from Reed and Sue told her the whole story. They were actually surprised that she hadn't heard anything about the space station, or the incident on the bridge, or with Victor. Stella could hardly believe what they were telling her. By the time they had finish the only thing she could manage to say was:

"My God!"

"But that's not all," Reed continued with just a hint of game show host cheesiness. "I believe you may have been affected as well."

"How is that possible?" Stella demanded.

"Because Johnny is," Reed began cautiously. "For all intensive purposes, radioactive—after the blast from the solar storm—the fire he generated to protect you—"

"What?" Stella asked, looking confused.

"After you fell, rock climbing," Sue explained. "A large chunk of rock broke off the cliff just above where you landed. Johnny threw himself over you, to protect you, and melted the bolder. But also exposed you to intense heat."

"Which, I believe," Reed continued. "Microwaved you on a molecular level. You see, the hotter things get the faster the molecules move. After the accident doctors noted that you seemed stable despite the fact that your vitals were irregular." Stella looked confused. "A very rapid pulse, and elevated blood pressure, even a little bit of a fever. Not to mention the fact that after a fifteen-foot freefall, you hardly had a scratch on you by the time Johnny got you to the hospital. It's actually quite remarkable."

"I don't think it's so remarkable," Stella snapped. "What the hell does this mean?"

"We don't exactly know," Sue offered kindly.

"That's why we brought you here," Reed explained. "For some testing to determine the strain of this transformation."

"Testing?" Stella shot. "No way."

"It's okay." Johnny assured her. "Trust me, I've been hanging around these dorks long enough to know they're not gonna hurt you."

"Thanks," Sue shot back at him, before turning back to Stella. "We just want you to stay long enough to figure this out." Stella looked from the scientists and then to Johnny, before she nodded timidly.

"Wonderful," Reed began. "I'll go over your charts again, and then we can get started." The two scientists started off and so did Ben.

"So do you want to head down to the gym for a while," Johnny asked.

"But I thought..."

"Trust me, the way the Human Rubber Band goes over charts, you'll be here until next week," Johnny assured her.


A/N: So that's how it is, like it or not.