Fooruman looked up at the stars above him and laughed. His new castle on Mercury was perfect; thanks to a heat shield he’d created, he had even managed to prevent himself (and his castle) from being boiled by the sun. He knew the remaining resistance fighters on earth would soon discover his base on Mercury, but he wasn’t concerned; he was quite confident they would lack the technology needed to live on a planet so close to the sun. He looked down at a book sitting on a desk in front of him. “Well,” he said to himself, “If what this ancient text says is true, things are going to become quite interesting.”

Fooruman closed the book and looked once again at the stars. “Time to unleash the full potential of the greatest power in the ‘verse – the sun.”

Fooruman got into his magical anti-heat suit, picked up a spell book, and walked outside. He sealed the heat-lock on his new castle, creating an eerie blue glow around the structure, and looked up towards the sun. He mumbled a few words under his breath, and instantly the sun became ten times brighter than ever before. After about two seconds, it went back to the way it was, sending out a tremendous wave of flame and destruction. “Excellent,” he said, “When the resistance reaches Mercury, I’ll have a warm welcome ready for them – and a terrible pun, too.”

Coppertop opened the door leading into her laboratory, walked through it, and closed the door behind her. She clapped her hands twice, and instantly the lights came on. In front of her was her greatest invention: a portable heat shielding suit, cooled by a self-replenishing source of dry ice. It wasn’t enough to protect a human from being boiled by the sun, but it was a start. Coppertop looked carefully at the part she held in her hands. “Well,” she said to herself, “I guess the combination of science and magic was inevitable. I just hope this works.”

She opened up the dry ice generator on the prototype suit and placed the component she’d found into the cooling mechanism. At first, nothing happened. She reached to take it out, disappointed; however, before she could take it out, it started to glow an eerie blue. Instantly her hand was frozen. She pulled it away quickly and began to run cold water over it. “Excellent,” she said.

The door that served as the entrance to the laboratory opened, and through it came Violet. He examined her for a minute and realized that the component she’d installed had been a success. Still, he wasn’t pleased. “Where did you find that part?” he said.

“What do you mean?” Coppertop quickly replied.

“You and I both know you haven’t been working on any new component. You obviously found it somewhere. Where?”

Coppertop finished drying off her now-thawed hand and looked at Violet for a moment. Finally, she responded. “I found it near the wreckage of Castle Foo.”