"Logan, your life force is remarkable. If you have no objections, let's begin."
Wolverine had no objections. Like Cyclops, he agreed without much deliberation.
Thea consulted Doctor Strange as a formality. In the physical world, the Phoenix Force's destructive potential was extreme. Even a wisp of leaked energy could cause incalculable damage to this universe.
Marvel's sorcerers were, on the whole, a weak bunch, but the late Ancient One and Doctor Strange were genuine powerhouses. In Thea's estimation, both were at Circe's level. The three Sanctums the Ancient One had established during her tenure as Sorcerer Supreme were solid work, built on the same principle as Thea's own New Continent: intercepting higher-dimensional threats from a slightly elevated plane.
She could borrow the Sanctum's defensive infrastructure for this.
Most of the heroes stayed at Avengers HQ. A handful of magic enthusiasts and the deeply curious, Iron Man and Batman among them, tagged along.
Thea didn't mind an audience. As the daughter of a president, being watched was the default state. She could read comic books during a press conference; compared to that, this was nothing. Wolverine and Cyclops, on the other hand, weren't thrilled about performing in front of a crowd.
Thea sat cross-legged in the middle of the Sanctum's open hall and beckoned the three of them to sit facing her.
The sorcerers of the New York Sanctum had been startled by the arrival of so many non-magic users. Doctor Strange had abandoned the policy of seclusion, but this many outsiders at once was still jarring.
The three of them sat according to her instructions: a triangle formation, Jean in the back, Cyclops and Wolverine in front.
Thea handed each of them a ring. "I'll divert two primary streams from the Phoenix Force. The Life Ring will amplify your vitality. The Emotion Ring will let your attacks carry emotional energy. Also, the three of you will develop a degree of telepathy going forward..."
She played dumb about the triangle, fighting back laughter as she kept a straight face.
A man and a woman sharing a psychic bond was romantic, even beautiful. Man and man, woman and woman, that could work too. But throw a third person into the mix, and "awkward" didn't begin to cover it.
Cyclops and Wolverine's eyes met by accident. Both looked away instantly, as if they'd seen something horrifying.
Thea cleared her throat, signaling she was about to start.
"If I lose control...?" Jean asked, uncertainty creeping in.
Thea had to put on a show of confidence. "I've seen that Thanos you dealt with before. My strength is roughly on his level. The Phoenix Force is formidable, yes, but let me be blunt: what you carry is less than a ten-thousandth of the total. If it came down to it, even if you fully turned into the Dark Phoenix, you wouldn't beat me."
The words were blunt, but every person in the room relaxed. To put Jean further at ease, Thea layered more than a dozen sealing spells directly onto her body.
"Try it. See how much of the Phoenix Force you can draw on through the seals."
Jean was nervous at first, but when she reached inward, the Phoenix Force that normally demanded the better part of her mental energy just to suppress felt as if it had vanished entirely. This gave her a clearer sense of Thea's strength.
"Keep going. Release your limits gradually." Thea's tone was casual.
Jean clenched her fists, gritted her teeth, and began loosening the mental barriers she'd spent years building. Credit where it was due: containing this much power with a mortal mind for this long was remarkable in itself.
Getting even a thread of Phoenix Force through her layered defenses was a slow grind. The energy leveraged its own nature to break through barrier after barrier. By the time a single thread, no thicker than a finger, had been extracted, an hour had passed.
Thea wasn't doing this out of charity. If she were staying in the Marvel universe, mastering the Phoenix Force would've been worth pursuing. But she was only passing through.
Even so, the Phoenix Force offered tremendous insights. Life and emotion were just the foundation. Deeper layers held mysteries she'd need time to unravel.
Scarlet Witch's Chaos Magic was also worth studying, but unlike Jean, who served as a host, Wanda was more of a user. The connection was fundamentally different.
As for the even more elusive Goblin Force, she hadn't even considered it. Too far out of reach.
Jean had deliberately left a gap in her mental prison. A single thread of Phoenix Force was drawn directly out, coiling in Thea's palm like a flame with its own life force, though its very concept was far more advanced than ordinary flame.
At the deepest layer of consciousness, spirit, and thought, Thea glimpsed the Phoenix Force's true shadow.
It had a will of its own. From some higher dimension, it cast an almost lazy glance downward. Thea inclined her head in respect and answered with a smile.
The exchange was brief. Both sides withdrew. The Phoenix Force seemed content to watch, an impartial observer, as Thea partitioned the thread of energy and channeled it into the two rings.
"So it can be done this way?" No simple language passed between them, but the meaning was clear.
Thea offered the Phoenix Force her ring-forging technique and the method of partition. In the future, it could ease the burden on its hosts instead of the usual psychic tug-of-war. Buy one, get two free: a three-person link would be the standard setup for every future Phoenix host.
In return, the Phoenix Force severed the remaining psychic tether to the fragment it had given up.
A tiny spark, flickering like a candle in the wind, became Thea's private property. Whatever she managed to learn from it was entirely her affair.
Both sides got what they wanted. From now on, the Phoenix Force could coexist more peacefully with its hosts, and Thea had the research sample she needed.
In the physical world, as she worked, a surge of life force and a surge of emotional power were drawn from the Phoenix Force like currents from an ocean. Torrential energy poured into the two rings.
With Jean as the nexus, two lines of energy linked Cyclops and Wolverine. The direct infusion of Phoenix energy, even filtered through Jean, sent both men into a brief state of mental disorientation.
Jean, relieved of half her psychic burden, followed Thea's instructions and carefully began unlocking the seals. Uncountable streams of energy poured in from unknown depths and flooded her body, circulating through the two rings and their wearers in an external loop.
All three closed their eyes, beginning their first mental communication.
Thea stepped aside to savor the nuances of the Phoenix Force. Other people's power could be studied, but never copied wholesale. She was also experimenting with fusing life and emotion into something uniquely her own. What to call it? Thea Force? The cringe factor felt a little high...
Her mind wandered, but subtle changes were already taking place in Jean Grey's body.
Her hair was growing redder. Her aura, colder. And a power far exceeding anything this universe could contain was beginning to erupt from within.