Chapter Eight
Javna landed on the far side of the wall, unable to move. Flashes of light would fly out of his eyes at intervals but Piper had progressed to the point that she could freeze things with a glare. It made her wonder, though, if the specifications of her powers were indeed true or it was something Phoebe had said to help her make sense of it all.
It didn't make sense that this could be molecular manipulation when he could freeze energy, or at least that was what she assumed the beams of green light were which Javna had tried to fire at them.
"Evil eyes, look unto thee," they intoned. "May they extinguished be, bend thy will to the Power of Three, eye of earth, evil and accursed."
Prue, who was standing in the middle of their configuration held out her hand, a snake snaking its way over it before a thick beam of light flew outwards; it stretched even larger as it moved through the air, large enough that it encapsulated him. When it hit, the man was eviscerated.
"I still think we could have played this better," said Piper. "What about the other woman we missed? Those that had their youth sucked out."
"I doubt we could have found a way to undo that," said Prue. "Even with our magic. We didn't know much about him beyond the surface level stuff. Maybe a spell might have counted it but that wouldn't make sense in the greater dimension of how magic works."
As Prue spoke Piper nodded because though she didn't know all the rules of magic, logic still applied. Javna had needed to refuel on youth, which meant he burnt through the stuff like gasoline, that they would be able to bring something burnt up back seemed truly impossible. Except if time travel was possible, or if they had…
"Leo!" she said and this earned the confusion of her sisters. The man orbed into the room not a moment sooner, his face expectant. "Does the fountain of youth exist?"
"I think so, why? What's going on?" the whitelighter asked.
"Aren't you supposed to be keeping an eye on us?" said Prue. "How does that work if you can't see what we're doing?"
"It doesn't work like that," Leo explained. "I can hear everything my charges say, feel their emotional states if there aren't any magical interferences. I can't really handle all of this…I mean, sure I can, but I don't like listening to everything going on in people's lives. So I've taught myself to temper it down, I only actively listen when I feel people in distress, or if they call my name."
"So we weren't in distress enough for you to come running?" asked Phoebe.
Leo nodded. "You still haven't told me about the Fountain of Youth," he said. "Using it on yourselves would constitute personal gain and—"
"Yeah, we get it," Piper interrupted. "Doing nice things for yourself is bad. That wasn't the intention. The demon we just fought, he sucks up youth, leaving people old. I was thinking we can give those people back their youth."
"Good idea," said Phoebe. "We can even use his demon dust to scry for the people whose youth he's already taken. With my pre- and retrocognition it should be a cinch figuring things out."
"I'll have to ask the Elders," he said. "Can you give me a day? Two at most?"
The three nodded and Leo orbed out. They didn't speak, but Piper could see it a little, the shared realisation running through all of them. They already had a way of counter Leo, but, more worryingly, it was possible that Leo might already suspect that not all was well. After all, they hadn't panicked even as they had been attacked in their own home.
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It couldn't be molecular control Piper realised after pain staking hours reading through the library's science sector and sitting in on some physics classes. From the little that she'd understood on molecular control, it was more in line with Prue's telekinesis than her power, which was the reason she was asking Sarah Lineman.
"What's this about again?" she asked, she had a weathered look about her, as though she was on the cusp of having a nervous breakdown.
"My curiosity," said Piper. "It's something I have an interest in."
"I'm sorry, lady," the girl said. "But I'm really busy. I've got a test in two weeks and every second I have should be spent studying."
"This won't take more than a second," said Piper. "Just explain to me how it would be possible to do the things I've said."
Sarah sighed. "Fine," she said. "But I want a named character and a free copy."
"What?"
Sarah snorted. "I want to see how this book of yours will turn out. I mean I get it, it's something I've thought about too. Literature with powers doesn't really make sense because those powers to make sense from a psychics perspective. You get me a named character and I'll tell you how that could work."
"You got me," said Piper with a small grin. "It might take a while, though. I'm still working through the rough drafts, that's not even mentioning that I might scrap the entire thing and choose a different premise."
She shrugged. "Worth the gamble," said Sarah. "Any way, the thing you described sounds like manipulating time to be honest…except you said you want it to be molecular control?"
"That's what my sister said," said Piper. "But I thought that telekinesis might be molecular control."
"Which it is," Sarah replied. "The power you described is also a form of molecular control but it's more limited. The power would be controlling the vibrations of the particles that make up an object."
"But how would that work towards exploding things?"
"I don't think there'd be a lot of fire in that situation. More dry explosions. Imagine the character used the power on a tree, since she won't be only targeting the wood for example, but the tree as a whole, the character would be speeding the entire thing up. The water molecules would be excited into a gas, expand and then shatter the tree.
"The same principle could work on other states of matter," she went on. "Freezing by stopping or slowing the vibrations of the molecules and exploding thing but rapidly causing them to change states. It might look like an explosion because gas particles have weak attractive forces…well weaker, it gets a little complicated when you really think about it."
"What about energy? The ability wouldn't work on it, right?"
"No, it wouldn't. Man, you're really putting a lot of thought in this."
"I'm a little obsessive about small details," said Piper with a small smile. "Is there any state of matter, then, that looks eerily like energy?"
"Plasma," said Sarah. "The fourth state of matter."
So if she was going by this, then it was likely that Javna's beams were in fact, plasma. One question answered and still a greater understanding of her ability, what it could and couldn't affect. With this limitation, she made sure to ingrain it in her mind that she wouldn't be able to stop fire.
"There's even a fifth state of matter," Sarah went on. "But even I have trouble grasping that, much less simplifying it."
"You've been a tremendous help," said Piper, she stood, grabbing her and leaving. She was lucky enough that no one paid attention as she moved, instead caught in their little worlds, which was the reason probably none of them noticed as Prue appeared—but then that might have been something to do with Phoebe.
"Prue? What's going on?" she asked.
"I think I've got five seconds," she said. "We won't be at home. Demon activity in the city. We can handle it."
"Okay," Piper said but Prue had already disappeared. She continued walking only to look back as she heard footsteps behind her, too much in a hurry for her to just ignore it.
She turned to see a young man, hair dark and a familiar cast to his features. Piper was struck by that, but the more paranoid part of her was at the ready, focusing on stopping the man before he could reach her. She flicked her hands and nothing happened.
"Oh, no," said Piper, stumbling back and letting him mind run lose, imaging how to play this. If he was resistant to her freezing then it was highly probable that moving his molecules would be hard.
Think fast because he's closing the distance, she thought before an idea hit. She could hit him directly but perhaps indirectly.
She pointed her hands and the young man's eyes bulged before he disappeared in a flurry of small blue circles. Piper stopped before she could fire the thing, noticing that people were looking where the man had disappeared.
He appeared beside Piper, engulfing her in a hug. "Don't attack," she heard his say before she felt herself breaking apart and being reformed almost instantaneously.
The boy stumbled away, his hands raised to make sure Piper didn't attack him. "Mom, don't kill me!" he said, eyes closed and head turned to the side.
What?
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AN: Not a physicist and the research put into this chapter was meagre, most of it coming from the fact that plasma is really hard to encapsulate because it's complicated. Some stuff may be wrong, correct me and I'd fix up the chapter.