If You Can't Take the Heat...

Underground Complex

Coming from a dance background she thought of it as her studio, but it was more akin to a workshop than anything. The room was large and open; versatile enough to facilitate various functions, though not exactly ideal for any of them. There was a small wooden stage of sorts formed along a prominent mirror-lined wall located at the room's anterior and desks stacked neatly in an adjacent corner. For safety reasons, Johnathan had included four unhindered doorways in the other walls' creations - points of egress for rapid evacuation should the awful happen. And mounted throughout the room were fire extinguishers and buckets of water. Zelda felt these precautions to be unnecessary; perhaps overconfident in her command of her own body's newfound capacity for combustion. But keeping everyone safe was literally the purpose of their subterranean community and she'd seen elsewhere -and regrettably it had been her own untutored malfeasance- the effects of an uncontrolled fire in a contained space. Regardless, the studio's rudimentary fire suppression system was nonnegotiable and she wouldn't have been surprised if additional precautions were in place. Memories of the obliterated opera house in Milan caused her to shudder as she imagined being buried alive again under a collapsing ceiling.

From the front of the room Zelda pushed up from her padded mat and announced, “I think that is enough for today.” The simultaneous relaxing of posture and deep exhalation of the participants out among the class was audible; many were sweating and appreciative to have come up against the end of the session. It wasn’t a class in any official capacity; attendance wasn’t mandated or progress quantified. It was more like a regimen of guided exercises designed to strengthen the body’s core and increase physical stamina. At any rate, not everyone made frequent visits to the surface and while it gave the mutants another productive outlet for their time and energy, it often felt to be one of the few contributions that Zelda could make towards the overall health and benefit of those eclectic group of individuals making up the Underground Mutant Community. She hadn’t been among the Community for long; perhaps three months. And before that she’d merely survived; often by the good graces of others. In this post-Rupture world, Zelda had struggled to make a sustainable wage and achieve some semblance of security. In this regard she was no different than most.

Mats were being rolled up and stowed in a corner as people talked among themselves and made their way from the room. Zelda held out a towel to one of the members who was sweating from their efforts and waved cheerfully. Sweating was one of those normal bodily functions that Zelda's body no longer underwent. She simply had no need of a sweating mechanism as she could not become overheated or dehydrated due to exertion or the elements; at least not due to heat-related conditions. Indeed her skin, hair and nails gave all indications of being completely impervious to fire and the detrimental impacts of extreme heat. She didn't have access to a solar furnace to establish the thresholds of this impervious nature, and she wouldn't have volunteered to do so regardless, but she'd walked away unscathed from a ten minute observation inside a white hot blast furnace. Having not recently subjected herself to scientific or medical scrutiny, she had no way of knowing whether there were longterm implications to this, but it was highly doubtful.