The Never-Setting Sun.

[Stern]

It had been dark for days. The large, roiling clouds drifted endlessly in every direction. It made Michael Stern sick to his stomach. It made the whole world a dreary place. The sun was nowhere to be seen.

"Stern, you look like a ghost," Father Maxwell said at church one day.

The high schooler nodded. "Yeah, Father. I guess its the weather."

The priest clapped him on the back. "Well, you'll need to brighten up a little. You get confirmed this week! You should be excited!"

Stern managed a weak smile and adjusted his letter jacket. "I'll do my best."

Three days later, Stern sat in church, listening to the bishop preach. The darkness had still not lifted outside. Weather forecasters predicted rain. Lots of rain.

The darkness outside made the light inside seem like something clandestine and hidden. Like if the clouds outside knew there was light in the church, they'd rush in through the doors and windows to snuff it out.

Stern kept his eyes trained on the large crucifix hanging behind the altar. Christ in his agony, lit up by spotlights. At last the congregation kneeled in preparation to recieve the eucharist. The teen did his best to reign in his fear. He tried every prayer for fear he ever learned as a child. It pressed in around him as he prayed for it to stop.

Carrying his fear with him, he took communion. When he took the body and blood of Christ his fears broke over him like a tidal wave. Heart racing, eyes darting wildly, Stern screamed.

The Eucharistic ministers, the priest, and the bishop shielded their eyes and clung to their chalices and bowls. The congregation, heads bowed in prayer squinted to see what was going on.

Sterns whole body felt hot. He opened his eyes, but saw only bright, blinding light.

Outside the church, people from the road and those walking past saw everything as though it was broad daylight.

The light faded at last and suddenly Stern didn't feel so afraid as he did tired. Mass continued around him as well as it could, given the interruption. Stern returned to his seat.

After Mass was over, Father Maxwell sought out Stern in the crowd as they left the sanctuary.

"Are you ok, Michael?"

Stern nodded. "I think so. I never did like the dark. I guess it just overwhelmed me."

The priest nodded. "I see. Well, in your fear of darkness, you produced an extraordinarily bright and dazzling light."

Stern looked shocked. "That was me? All that light that engulfed me? That was me?"

Father nodded. "It was. We need to make an appointment to talk about it more later. In the meantime we'll have to find a way to keep people calm. Something extraordinary happened today."

Neither person said, "mutant." Mutant had a seriously bad connotation.

The appointment was made the next day, after Stern got out of Cross-Country practice.

Father motioned for stern to sit down in a chair across from his desk. "Michael, I am making an official statement that what happened at the confirmation service was a wonderful miracle of God. I think we both know what happened that night. You have become a mutant."

Stern nodded. "You're not mad, are you? My parents seem to be ok, but they keep looking at me like they don't know what I'm going to do next."

Father nodded. "Well, mutant or not, you are still a child of God. And a Catholic. I don't usually talk about the mutant issue at Mass, but when the topic does come up, I try to get people to understand it as an act of God. That we must embrace people who are mutants and love them unconditionally.”
<o></o>
“Ok,” Stern said. “So what do I do?”
<o></o>
Father Maxwell leaned on his desk. “Harness your gift. Either on your own or with help. The Cullen Institute I hear is a good place to go if you are a mutant.”
<o></o>
Thunder clapped outside, then came the sound of rain.
<o></o>
Stern looked crestfallen and uncertain.
<o></o>
“The sun will be coming out again soon,” Father said. “No matter what happens, remember always that darkness cannot stand as long as there is the smallest light.”
<o></o>
Those words stuck with Stern years after when he was in college. Four years had passed since his powers manifested. Stern’s eyes in the meantime had mutated such that they were entirely pupils. He had to have a set of heavy tinted goggles made special for his ability.
<o></o>
His hair likewise, was clear. Owing to his power, it was usually a bleach-blonde color.
<o></o>
The dark still bothered Stern, as it did on this particular night. It was late, but one of his classmates insisted that they meet to study. So he stood in the middle of the quad, waiting for her to show up so that he could help her push past Hume’s theory of Constant Correlation and William James’ work, The Varieties of Religious Experience.
<o></o>
As always, he glowed a bit in the dark, with his hair a beacon in the night.<o></o>

[Flux]

Ah, ESU. Felix's future alma-mater, and the place where his brother was getting his degree in...whatever it was he was getting a degree in. Felix always zoned out when he started up on his school.

Felix had come out here on his own, on a school night, just to test his powers. He'd found himself some smooth metal bands that would fit around his wrists and ankles, and thus stay better hidden under his clothes than the coils he'd been using. By repelling and attracting himself to structures, he'd crossed the city in a rapid fashion, besting the congested traffic and making the campus in an hour.

Night had just fallen, and Felix made a note to himself to try and swing bus or cab fare back, in order to avoid breaking something in the dark. He spent some time on the campus moving between buildings, crawling undetected on them by magnetizing his bands to the metal inside the structures. He'd made it as far as the quad when he noticed that it was a person, not a light in the center, that was creating a soft glow. Felix leapt out to the guy's position, addressing him as he landed.

"Hey, Lightbulb, what'cha up to this late at night?"

Felix was dressed in a slate gray sweatsuit and black gloves, and had decided to wear the mask Banner made for him to keep his identity secret in case he was spotted. He was itching to get the rest of the uniform from her when he visited Cullen's.

"Do you always play lamppost out here, or is it a special occasion?"

[Stern]

Stern hated the dark. You never knew what was in there. Apparently he had drawn out some masked person. Campus was a pretty safe place, but he had heard of shady people sometimes strolling through in the middle of the night. Just his luck.

Or who knows? Maybe it was a fraternity brother hazed into screwing around with a mutie in the middle of the night.

"You sure you want to be dressed like that in the middle of the night? Campus police might give you some trouble."

Stern grew brighter. He learned shortly after arriving to college that the glowing had more to do with adrenaline than actual emotions. If he could get his blood pumping regardless of his mood, he inevitably increased his brightness by several watts. On a visit home, he mentioned it to Father Maxwell, who referred to it as his "high-beams" mode. That line of thinking eventually gave way to the first really practical use of his power: focused rays of light.

Even as unassuming and non-threatening radiating light could be, people were still disturbed when he used his powers on campus. Instead he'd have to rely on something he'd only been practicing for half the time of his powers: his Krav Maga training.

Hopefully his classmate was ok. Maybe she was still close by her dorm or some place well lit so any accomplices would be discouraged about confronting her. But if this guy was bold enough to step out into the light, then maybe they would be too.

[Flux]

"Campus police can bite my magnetic butt," Felix said, feeling confident that he could take out a few chumpy cop wanna-bes. "I'm not doing anything out here besides testing my powers and talking to you."

[Stern]

"Oh," Stern said, dimming back down to the softer glow he had before. "Well, that's different."

A fellow mutant. Somehow the thought had never occurred to him.

"The glow is a side-effect of my powers, I guess. During broad daylight you'd never know this is going on. It mostly only happens at night or on rainy days."

Stern adjusted his backpack and rolled a few cricks out of his neck.

"So what's with the mask? Campus is kind of dead right now."

[Flux]

"You never know." Felix shrugged. "It's purely a back-up-for-just-in-case thing, and besides, I haven't worn it since my girlfriend first made it for me."

Stopping to chat hadn't really been on Felix's "to do" list, and it didn't look like there was any metal around aside from what he was wearing.

"So people around here don't care that you have radioactive hair?"

[Stern]

"Well, it is a college campus. People with ideas, folks advocating mutant rights...you know, all those people who hold ideals they know nothing about."

Stern shrugged. "I'm definitely for mutant rights, but when you get people who don't really understand what being a mutant is like trying to tell you how you should live as a mutant, it can be just as bad as the people telling you that you have no right to live at all. Like Hermione and S.P.E.W. I don't know if you've read Harry Potter."

Stern checked his watch: fifteen minutes had passed since his classmate said she was going to show up. Now that the apparent danger was over, he was getting kind of impatient.

"I was supposed to meet someone to study, but I guess they're not going to show. I think I'm going to ditch my books at my room. What did you say you could do again?"

[Flux]

Felix laughed at the line about people holding ideals they didn't know about, and tolerated the rest of Stern's talk with a few nods and "yeahs". He didn't really start participating until the line about powers.

"I'm magnetic. Come on." He walked to the nearest building a few yards away, where he had seen a metal grate in the sidewalk. He stood on the grate a few feet from the building, then jumped, repelling himself as he did so. He leapt nearly seven feet up the side of the building, where he magnetized himself to a metal windowframe. "My powers rule," he called down to Stern.

[Stern]

Stern raised a hand and shone a spotlight on him. "That's pretty clever. Come on, my dorm is the next building over."

Stern used his student ID to get into the building and waved Felix inside. "My room is on the second floor. Going to dump my books in the common room, then we can go do something else. Grab a late night milkshake or something."

[Flux]

Felix let himself down gently, using the same grate he jumped off of earlier to slow his fall by repelling himself slightly as he landed. He followed Stern, but stopped at the door. If his brother lived here, it wouldn't do to get caught here and have him report back to the parents what he was really doing when he told them he was at a friend's house. Plus, it'd be wierd as hell wandering around in the open with his mask on.

"I'll just wait out here, if that's alright."

[Stern]

Stern shrugged. "Suit yourself."

He headed around the C-shaped hall to his dorm, left the books in the corner by the door, and stepped back outside to meet Felix.

"I'm Michael Stern."

Stern offered Felix a luminescent hand to shake.

[Flux]

Felix had waited to the side, where he'd be less likely to be seen in the shadow of the building, and stepped away to rejoin Stern. Felix shook the hand, but wasn't sure what name to give him. He took a cue from Tron.

"You can just call me Magnet Man," he replied. "What do your roommates think of living with a mutant?"

[Stern]

"My powers aren't very frightening," Stern said. "I glow and project beams of light. There's not a lot of destruction to be had. Except maybe blinding people or something. I actually get a lot of calls asking to find lost cell phones and stuff in the middle of the night. I charge for it, too."

He laughed. "The night the Greeks had their huge party, I got a lot of money. Everyone lost something. Of course, there are somethings once lost, you can't find, but we'll leave that alone."

The two walked kind of aimlessly around the campus. "In truth there is some relative combat ability to my power."

Stern picked up a stick in one hand and curled his hand into a cup shape. A bright pinpoint of light appeared on the stick and it began to smoke and smell like burning.

"I'm no Archimedes, but I think I can increase the wattage or whatever it is to make the beam more intense. Right now I'm not much more than a magnifying glass frying ants."

[Flux]

"Aha. Well, I'm basically useless without metal. At least, so far, so I get what you mean about not being exactly combat-oriented. I just need to find some way of keeping metal on me that I can use for fighting. I get the feeling it's gonna be useful."

[Stern]

"Ball bearings. Maybe bullets too. Don't know how you feel keeping loose ammunition in your pockets, though. Needles, tacks, and if you can find old metal jacks from old school children's games, those could be good too."

Stern chuckled. "If it's small and metal, you can probably make it a projectile."

[Flux]

"I can even make huge stuff into projectiles. I've launched cars, you know." He kicked at a rock, watching it skip away down the hill they were walking on. "Thing is, I'd like to it organized, somehow. Keeping sharp metal objects in my pockets or whatever would be a nuisance. Like, it'd be cool to have it set up somehow so I could keep it in a chamber, like a gun or something, and then have a way to aim and fire without having to pull ammo out or whatever. Like, a wrist-mounted thing, maybe. Or even something more like an actual gun that I could fire with magnetism. I've been looking into it, and I haven't quite figured out how to work it yet.

[Stern]

Stern nodded. "Go talk to Engineering and Physics seniors, then. I honestly don't know what else to tell you."

The campus was big and sprawling, but there was construction and restoration going on close by. It was all fenced off, but Stern imagined it wouldn't pose a great challenge to his new found magnetic friend.

"Let's go hop in here and see what we can get a hold of. They just finished the basement area a day or so ago, so we can try to figure something out down there. They should have left some materials from the day that we can mess with."

[Flux]

The gate was locked with a chain and padlock. Felix made a motion like pulling it apart, and two links repelled each other so forcefully that the one between them broke. The chain slithered to the ground, and a simle gesture from Felix opened the gate.

"This is gonna be awesome as hell."

[Stern]

Stern nodded. "Let's see. For a magnetic gun I reckon we'll need some kiind of coil for a spiral. Let's get some sort of metal tube too. We might be able to shoot the projectile through the coil itself, but if not then we'll need a barrel. And of course, there's the problem of ammunition."

The college student opened his hands and shone light around the construction sight. "Any conductive metal wire should do if they don't have anything handy. I can't tell if they've started the plumbing yet, so we might not find any piping. Electrical wire shouldn't be hard to get a hold of. Nails or screws will work for the projectiles. See what you can find. We need to be quick. My powers kind of make us conspicuous."

[Flux]

Felix began to draw metal into the searchlight, grinning wildly under his mask. Coil gun! He wished he'd been more attentive in studying them. He found a piece of metal pipe quickly enough, but wasn't finding any wire.

"Come on come on..." he muttered. He found some nuts to use for bullets and pocketed them, yet the wire eluded him. "See anything?" he asked Stern over his shoulder.

[Stern]

Stern looked by the walls and joists where the wiring was likely to go. "Hold on. I spent a summer doing construction and landscaping. I have an idea about where it might be. Wiring goes through the ceilings most of the time, so there might be some on the upper tiers."

Stern raised a hand and scanned the support structure. "There it is." Stern paused to illuminate a coil. "We'll only really need but a few feet. Can you shear it somehow magnetically?"

[Flux]

"Never tried it," Felix admitted. But it was a hell of a good idea. Go college kids. He reached up and attracted a section of the coil to the metal support beams, then attempted to repel a segment of it. The wire bent, but didn't shear. He tried repelling the ends of the segment from the wire on either side; that did the trick, and a few seconds later Felix was the proud owner of five feet of wire. "Got it."

[Stern]

"Into the basement. We don't need to spend any more time out here."

The two took the temporary stairs down into the dark chamber. Stern increased his wattage, going from a dim glow to a brighter shine.

"Ok. I don't know much about this, so we'll have to reason it out and see what works."

Stern twisted the wire into a coil. "The thing about this is, we need to generate a magnetic field to propel an object. The bolts you took: they need to hold your own charge. I think it'll take away from the object's potency if you have to ionically charge both objects at once."

[Flux]

"Wait, hang on," Felix protested. His eyes weren't adjusting well to the light; the lenses in his mask did nothing to dampen the sudden brightness and his fingers rubbed uselessly against them as he reflexively tried to touch them.

"Okay, so the nuts need to have a charge already? Like, I need to make 'em positive and keep 'em that way?"

[Stern]

"Yeah. Then you control the magnetic fields throughout the coil to propel the nut."

Stern put his hands together to signify a magnetic field and placed them around the tubing. Then he moved his hands from one end ot the other. "It'd work like that, I think."

[Flux]

Felix made his ammo positively charged, then took the pipe and charged it negatively. They sprang together. Felix dropped the charge on the pipe and created a negative charge in one of his arm bands. The nuts flew to his wrist, confirming that they hadn't lost their charge. Felix un-did the charge on his bands and started to work on the other coils.

"I hope this works."

[Stern]

"Well, we're doing things old-school. Try stuff until we get something that works. Just think, we're like Edison or Ford."

Stern began to tinker with the rest of the wire. "I'm wondering if it's enough for it to be just one coil, or if we should double-helix it like DNA. Even if we get the fields to work, and get the bolt moving fast enough, if it doesn't fly straight, then none of it matters."

[Flux]

Felix didn't consider himself an inventor, especially considering that the coil gun already exists, but making one himself did feel pretty awesome.

"Let's try one coil first. How many separate coils do we need? We've got enough wire to make a ton. Think three or four will do it?"

[Stern]

Stern rubbed his chin and considered. "At least one. A double helix will need two. I don't think length in the coil would make much difference. We're really looking for velocity, I think. Could be we would just need an immense magnetic force to press the bolt through the coil."

Stern waved a hand around to take in the dark edges of the basement area. "None of these guys left any tools? We'll have to make due."

[Flux]

Felix held up two single-wire coils.

"Coil one, and coil two. Do we need more?" he asked. "And what do we need tools for?

[Stern]

"We don't. But it gives me a way to manipulate extra coils and stuff while you test the theories."

Stern tried using brute strength to bend the wire bundle. "Just go with one. Add in the second if it doesn't work."

[Flux]

Felix started to assemble the rig, shaking his head as he did. It looked wonky, like it wouldn't quite work.

"Do the coils need to be touching the barrel?

[Stern]

Stern stopped fiddling with the wire coil. "It would probably help. But the thing about this is that the magnetic field in the coil is going to magnetize the barrel too. You're going to have to make sure that when the field moves along the coil it doesn't end up magnetizing the entire barrel. If the whole barrel gets magnetized the same way, the bolt might fire out the other end, or not at all. Also, if the coil comes free of the barrel, the chances are decent that they will repel each other and damage either part."

Stern paused and reconsidered what he said. "Yeah, I think that's right. This is all guess work. Eventually, we're just going to have to try it. When you do, either stand to the side of the weapon, or cap off the end closest to you so you don't shoot yourself if things go wonky."

[Flux]

"Oh, I thought you actually knew what you were doing. All I've got to go on is a wikipedia article I fell asleep in front of." Felix wound the coils around the barrel and slid one of the positively charged nuts into the end of the pipe.

"Okay. I'm gonna try this. We've three coils, one at each end, and one in the middle. I'm gonna attract the nut to the first coil, and as it gets there, I'm gonna try and switch the charge so it then shoots the nut to the next coil, and so on til it goes out the barrel. Ready?"

[Stern]

Stern nodded. "Sounds good."

He shifted a bit behind Felix and to the side so he didn't end up casting Felix's shadow across the line of fire. They were going to need to see what happened to the bolt when Felix fired it.

"Sorry. I've only been using good old-fashioned reason and logic."

[Flux]

"Yeah, 's'fine." Felix was already distracted, pointing the pipe at a spot of paint on the wall. "Okay, go." There was a hiss as the nut slid to the first coil, and then a faster one as it slid back out the way it went and smacked Felix in the chest.

"Ow! Sonuva..." He picked it back up and put it back in the pipe. "Got my timing wrong," he grumbled.

[Stern]

Stern smiled and shifted his feet. His toe noticed something on the floor. He bent down and picked it up. It was a circlar metal clasp like the kind used to keep flexible duct tubing fastened to pvc of metal piping. They were most commonly found on the backs of clothes dryers to keep the tubing connected to the unit.

Looking around, Stern found a flier for a free concert. He wondered if the construction workers would be likely to attend the ESU singers, and decided to help Felix out.

"Here," he said. "Let's wrap this paper around this end and fasten it down with this thing."

Stern took the device from Felix and made the adjustment. "Don't know how long that paper will hold out, but it should offer some resistance if the bolt comes flying back at you again."

[Flux]

"Actually, you know what," Felix said after a minute of thought. "I'm gonna just drop the charge on Coil One as the bullet reaches it and then put a charge on Coil Two. Then again on Coil Three, and then hopefully we'll get some results."

He pointed the barrel again and fired off his charge. He could feel the nut sliding through the pipe and dropped the charge as it hit the first coil, switching to coil two with a little hesitation. The nut sprang forward, and Felix, in his excitement, forgot to charge coil three. The nut flew a foot or so from the pipe before tinkling to the concrete floor, and Felix laughed at his mistake.

"Jeez, it's like when I was learning False Roman Cancels in Guilty Gear. I get all excited that I did it and then fail to follow through."

[Stern]

Stern shrugged, causing the light to shift around.

"Baby steps. You're getting better at it."

Stern bent down and picked up a bolt.

"Here. Try again."

[Flux]

Felix reloaded and tried again, keeping his calm, but still the bullet didn't fly very far. He stood back and considered the contraption before him.

"Maybe we designed it wrong? Or maybe I'm not making enough force in it or something? Bah." He tossed the pipe aside as his watch alarm went off. "Dude, I gotta go. It was cool meeting you."

[Stern]

Stern nodded. "Same to you. Too bad we couldn't continue to figure this out. It was fun. You can get my e-mail address from the school's website. Keep me posted on this gun. I want to know if you actually really make it work."