The whole family was in the workshop.
Arthur had not planned for an audience. He had planned a controlled environment. Calm. Clinical. Just himself, Pietro, the Stone, and Eve monitoring the readings.
The plan, however, had not survived contact with Pietro.
After Arthur told him the research was complete and he was ready, Pietro, in his excitement, had not kept it to himself. Within minutes, the entire household had known, and then had come the demands to watch.
Arthur could not say no to the excited Elena and Tristan, and so here they all were, crowding the underground workshop.
Eileen leaned against the metal workbench with her arms folded, an amused smile on her lips. Elena was perched on a high stool, her legs swinging restlessly. Tristan stood beside his mother, watching the Mind Stone with the unblinking focus he brought to everything that interested him. Wanda hovered in the doorway, her arms crossed tight, trying to look casual and failing completely.
Winky stood in the corner, already holding a magical first-aid kit. She had watched Pietro grow up. She knew him. She knew the very first thing he would do after gaining superpowers was hurt himself. She came prepared.
Pietro stood in the centre of the room, staring at the Mind Stone floating in its containment field. The golden light washed across his face. He looked at the Stone. He looked at the heavy metal chair positioned in front of it. He looked back at Arthur.
"So, let me make sure I understand this," Pietro said. "I sit in the chair. I stare at the glowing yellow rock. And then I get superpowers."
"That is an oversimplification, but basically correct." Arthur said.
"It sounds like something out of a bad comic book."
"Most of our world sounds like something out of a comic book, Pietro."
"Fair point." Pietro cracked his knuckles. "So what power will this Stone give me? Can I choose? Because I want to fly."
"The Stone does not give you power. It unlocks what your body already contains but cannot access."
Pietro frowned. "What does that mean? I don't think I have a hidden power."
Arthur raised a single eyebrow. "The fastest track runner in the country thinks he isn't special?"
"I am only fast against normal humans. Against the enhanced..." Pietro trailed off, his eyes widening. He went very still. "I will become faster? How fast?"
"Sit down and find out."
Pietro dropped into the chair without another word.
"It will not hurt," Arthur instructed quietly. "But it will feel strange. Try not to overthink it."
Arthur glanced across the room at Wanda. She was watching from the doorway, tension visible in every line of her body. He caught her eye and offered a small, steady nod. A silent promise. This is not dangerous. I have done the work. I have it under control.
Wanda's shoulders eased a fraction. She trusted Arthur.
Arthur stepped back and lowered the magical containment field around the chamber.
The Mind Stone reacted before he could do anything else.
It rose in the air on its own, its golden light intensifying. Arthur watched with interest. The Stone had ignored mice. It had rejected five chimpanzees before finding one worth its attention.
But it liked Pietro. It liked him immediately, the way it had liked Caesar, but with far more urgency. It was as if the ancient artifact had been waiting for a mind exactly like this one.
The light flared, washing over Pietro like a wave of warm water.
Eleven seconds later, it dimmed.
Pietro blinked. He looked down at his hands. He turned them over, examining the palms, then clenched and unclenched his fists. He looked up at Arthur with an expression of deep confusion.
"I don't feel any different."
Arthur studied Eve's display. Heart rate normal. Neural activity elevated but perfectly stable. Cellular integrity intact. No distress markers. Everything was exactly where it should be.
"Try to stand up," Arthur said.
Pietro stood. He stretched his arms, rolled his shoulders, and bounced lightly on his heels. He frowned.
"I feel completely normal. No super speed. No tingling. Nothing. Are you sure it worked?"
"Try to walk to the other side of the room."
Pietro took a step.
CRACK.
The sound of displaced air snapped through the workshop like a gunshot. A blur of motion, entirely too fast for the human eye to track, vanished from the chair.
An instant later, a crash shook the room. The storage cabinet on the far wall rocked violently on its base, deeply dented where something had slammed into it at lethal speed.
Pietro was on the floor beside it, tangled awkwardly in his own limbs, looking completely startled.
Winky shook her head with a quiet, knowing sigh. She popped across the room and began healing the bruises on his forehead and shoulders before Pietro had even registered the pain.
Elena burst out laughing. She did not fully understand what had just happened, but the sight of her older brother in a heap on the floor with his legs pointing in different directions was, by any standard, hilarious.
Tristan said nothing. He was staring at the empty space between the chair and the cabinet with an expression of pure awe, as if he had understood exactly what had happened and was still processing the scale of it.
Eileen and Wanda rushed over. Eileen crouched beside him, expertly checking his head for a concussion. Wanda hovered right behind her, scarlet light flickering anxiously at her fingertips.
"What," Pietro gasped from the floor, "was that?"
Arthur walked over calmly. "Speed."
Pietro took Arthur's offered hand and pulled himself up. He looked at the dented cabinet. He looked at the fifteen feet of empty workshop between the cabinet and the chair he had been sitting in a second ago.
"I tried to take one step. One normal step. I was there. And then I was here. And you were all completely frozen."
"We were not frozen," Arthur corrected. "You were just moving too fast."
Pietro looked down at his legs as though they belonged to someone else entirely. "How fast?"
"Eve?" Arthur asked.
"Approximately two hundred and thirty miles per hour," Eve's voice chimed smoothly from the speakers. "Sustained for roughly one-tenth of a second. Heart rate remained stable throughout. No muscular or skeletal stress detected."
Pietro's mouth fell open.
The workshop was silent. Even Elena had stopped laughing. The number hung in the air, absurd and enormous and completely real.
"You and Wanda are twins," Arthur said quietly. "She has always had power humming inside her. And so did you. The exact same potential, expressed differently, buried much deeper. Something was blocking it from manifesting on its own. The Stone didn't give you anything new, Pietro. It simply removed the block."
Pietro did not look like he was absorbing the theory. He was still staring at his own boots.
"I am fast," he whispered, as though testing whether the words were real.
"You are fast."
Pietro looked up. He found his sister. "Sis. I am very fast."
Wanda's smile broke through, finally, real and warm and a little wet at the edges. "I heard you the first time, idiot."
"I am the fastest person on the planet," Pietro said. The grin that broke across his face was so wide, so fiercely bright, it seemed to physically change the temperature of the room.
"Wait until you can actually control your speed," Arthur warned, though his eyes were fond. "As you are right now, you are just a high-velocity danger to every piece of furniture in this house. So sit back down before you destroy something."
Pietro obeyed. He sat back in the chair very, very carefully. Gripping the armrests. Lowering himself at a speed that would have looked comically slow to anyone watching. His whole body was vibrating with barely contained energy. Not nervous energy. Pure, electric joy.
Elena slid off her stool and walked over to him. She poked his arm. "Do it again."
"Not indoors," Arthur and Eileen said simultaneously.
Tristan, who had not moved from his spot by the workbench, tilted his head. "Pietro. You are faster than a cheetah."
"Yes I am, Tris," Pietro said, beaming at his younger brother. "Way faster."
"And this is only the beginning," Arthur said, leaning against the desk and crossing his arms. "That was your baseline. Your very first step. I suspect you have a considerably higher ceiling above you."
Pietro looked at him. "How much more?"
Arthur met his eyes with the faintest hint of a smile.
"Maybe one day," Arthur said softly, "you might run faster than light."
The room went absolutely quiet.
Pietro's grin, which had seemed incapable of getting any wider, proved that assumption wrong.