39.

1.9K 65 3
                                    

≛≛≛

'Well, I'm stumped. The hot cheeto is a mystery to me.'

'It's not the first-time people are surprised that Johnny's made it this far...'

Tony sighed and put down the screen he pulled from JARVIS's display. Details of Johnny's vitals and cell activity were displayed in blue, showing how his body changed when he ignited his abilities. Tony stopped next to Sue, who looked over the railing down at the containment that held her brother. Pipes ran from the rectangular machine and connected to power points in the corners of the lab.

Johnny, clad in his blue suit with the napla-shape on the breast, worked on centralising his fire to parts of his body. The chamber monitored his progress and allowed JARVIS to run tests. If needed, extinguishing fluid would be released to ensure the fire department wouldn't need to be called to the Stark tower.

Sue watched as the chamber's crevices were overcome with flames from the inside. Her natural blonde had grown to leave only a few inches of brunette at the bottom. Tony said he liked the blonde and Sue was contemplating cutting the last of the brown off. Johnny's brown hair had fully grown out and he looked like his old self prior to the Marvel-1 mission.

'This guy's getting too much,' Tony mumbled as he looked at the read-out JARVIS showed on the screen. It climbed from two-thousand to four-thousand degrees kelvin, exceeding by the minute.

'Alright, Johnny, back it down!' Tony called out.

'I can go hotter!' his voice was heard from outside the chamber.

'Johnny! You'll set the whole place on fire!' Sue tried.

Johnny's temperature accelerated and the two outside the chamber covered their eyes at the blinding light. His flares went white, and the lab was filled with flashes bright enough to blind the eye. They yelled for Johnny to stop, only for Tony to slam his hand down on the extinguisher button. Foam sprayed inside the containment and Johnny is extinguished, head to toe in white clouds that smelt like nail polish.

'You really cramped my style, there,' Johnny called out from the large hole he created in the chamber. The edges were singed to a black, and the containment was ruined, but at least Johnny's ego was unnecessarily boosted.

'You were at four-thousand kelvin!' Sue called down to her brother. 'Any hotter and you're approaching supernova-'

'Sweet!'

'No, tabasco, that's the temperature of the sun,' Tony retorted. 'Not only could you kill yourself, but you could set fire to the Earth's atmosphere and destroy all human life as we know it.'

'Alright, okay, supernova. Bad,' Johnny held two foam-covered thumbs up. He stepped out of the hole he created and started wiping off handfuls of white.

Sue looked down at the panels that controlled the chamber. Levels were at zero and warning signs covered eighty percent of the screens. The man had been so hot that he cooked the system that operated the cell monitoring and the vitals data. JARVIS wouldn't be able to view anything in the state it was in.

'It's alright,' Tony let her know and swiped at the screens to clear all the warnings. 'I'll fix it. No biggy.'

'So, Johnny's still a mystery. He just... powered through the cosmic storm?' Sue made sure and Tony lowered his head in a nod.

'One of space's many mysteries.'

Tony turned to look down at Sue. They spent the last two years settling into the Stark tower that had become their new home. After the Stark mansion was destroyed, Tony made the Stark tower his permanent residence. Since it was across the country from Malibu, he asked Sue to move in with him. There wasn't much to consider as they were partners in combat and maybe even for life. Their relationship had grown from the unaffectionate one they had when Tony was dealing with post-trauma from the Chitauri invasion. Unfortunately for Tony, with Sue moving in with him, that meant Johnny followed her like a flaming shadow.

Storm ≛ Tony Stark ≛Where stories live. Discover now