Strength and Psionics
Chapter 1

Excalibur enters his lab with a robot assistant coming in behind, holding a large piece of crystalline Adamantium. Illumina was in one of the lab's bathrooms, finishing her shower, wrapping a towel around herself, and stepping on the scale...Which gives a readout of 105 pounds, normal for her. She then goes to her room to put on some night clothes, rummaging through her drawers, but finding nothing. She heads to another room, full of clothing that seems to have a nearly-unnoticeable glow to them, and finds one which seems to fit her: Two-piece long underwear, in a cream-yellow color. She puts it on and feels a rush of energy for no known reason...But shrugs off the feeling for now.

She walks into one of the rooms and sees Excalibur setting up a device that looks like a large chamber. "What're you doin, bro?" she asks him. Excalibur replies, "Well, sis, I am testing out my latest invention, a tool that can cut through the strongest of metals. It requires four things to work: light, large convex lenses, prisms, and a polychromatic diamond. First, light is focused through a large convex lens, then dispersed and magnified by a complex setup of prisms and lenses, and finally concentrated through the tip of a polychromatic diamond. This is an extremely powerful laser, and I am hoping it can cut through even crystalline Adamantium, the strongest, and heaviest, form of the metal Adamantium. Now if I can just think of something to cut out of the crystalline Adamantium..."

"Well..." Illumina replies, "You could use that laser-cutter of yours to cut out the inside of that stuff and get a look at the inside...Why not try that?" "...Good idea, Lum. I will also test out my device, now called the Polychromatic Laser Cutter, or PCLC for short, to see how precise it is in its cutting...Give me a few minutes and I will be finished."

While Excalibur is cutting the block, Illumina passes the time by wandering around the lab. She heads over to another of Excalibur's devices, clearly labeled as a Dimensional Transportation System. ~...Beta Version 2.31. How many of these things has he made already?~ Illumina thinks to herself. She then notices some of the buttons and dials on the machine and starts to fiddle with them, hoping the device will do something when she messes around with it. Nothing happens, and she is upset by this.

"Those experimental inventions of his never seem to work when I mess around with them. They don't even turn on!" she mutters to herself. Shortly afterward, she heads back to where Excalibur is to see how the cutting turned out. She has forgotten to look at one thing, though, before she decided to head back...There was a warning on the Dimensional Transportation System that stated: "This machine requires a ten-minute warm-up before it will activate. Please do not leave unattended! The Dimensional Transportation System must be closely monitored to make sure that nothing is rendered unstable in the activation process."

After Illumina heads back to the lab, she takes a look at what Excalibur has done to the block of Adamantium, which is now in three pieces: A big elliptical cylinder in the center, and the two halves of the original block, each missing half an oval at their cut edges. Excalibur is not around right now; It appears he left to check up on another one of his experiments. Illumina, not having anything else to do, picks up the middle piece with two hands, not having a problem lifting it, even though it is too heavy for a normal person to lift...She then sets it down on a nearby table, and picks up the two other pieces. She goes to set them over on the same table as the cylinder she sat down earlier, but something unexpected happens: Excalibur rushes out from the hallway where he was at, and heads towards one of the hallways, looking for Illumina, and not noticing that he just passed her on the way out...A violent explosion is heard from one of the other rooms, the force of it reaching all the way into the room where Illumina was in...And she, along with the pieces of crystalline Adamantium she is holding, are sent across the room...Right into the path of the PCLC.

The bottom piece lands on the floor of the PCLC, then Illumina, face down, and finally the other piece. Her midsection is sandwiched in between the two pieces of crystalline Adamantium. She uses her one hand to push against the top of the PCLC and turn herself over to get out, but accidentally bumps the switch to enable the PCLC. Though not close enough for the laser to cut into her, or the metal, it is close enough to melt one side of both pieces of the crystalline Adamantium together. She lays there, paralyzed in fear, scared that she is so close to the laser, and bangs the switch again, turning it off...Noticing that the device is now off, she flips herself over to get up...And somehow manages to bump the switch again, starting up the laser again and melting the other side of both pieces together. She bangs on the switch one more time and finally turns it off. Getting up off the PCLC and back onto the floor, she notices the two halves of the crystalline Adamantium have been mended into one piece, and for that matter, tightly around her waist. She tries to pull it down over her pants to get it off, but is unable to, as the piece is stuck where it is...There is no way she can get the piece of crystalline Adamantium off herself now without doing something like reactivating the laser, which she does not want to do right now after her recent experience with it...

Shortly after, Excalibur comes back in, and wonders what happened. "Illumina, are you OK?" He asks. "I am so sorry about running out like that without seeing where you were...I wanted to get out of there before that explosion occurred..." Illumina replies, "Yeah, Cal, I'm all right...Whatever blew up was pretty powerful, though...Sent me flying across the room, as well as those blocks of crystalline Adamantium. And thanks to that device of yours, I've got this stuck around me," then putting her hands around the crystalline Adamantium fused around her waist.

"Oh...Oh dear, sis, I had no idea this would have happened when I was gone," he tells her. "If you give me a few minutes, I can get the PCLC ready to cut through that without harming you..." "No thanks," Illumina replies, "maybe later on...Had too much of a bad experience with that thing right now..." Excalibur looks at her, and the crystalline Adamantium, closer, and notices something strange. He asks her, "Wait a minute...How are you able to stand up with that on you? You know how heavy crystalline Adamantium is..." "I dunno," Illumina replies, "Moving that piece in the center wasn't too much of a problem..." Excalibur seems to be surprised, as he is now wondering how Illumina's newly-acquired strength came to be...She then replies, "Hey, I'm not that weak...Why do you think I work out so much?"


Chapter 2


Back to Characters