Chapter 44: Boom, Boom, Boom
Boom. Boom. Boom. From under the Christmas tree emerged Bobby. An unhealthy chunk of his forearm went missing thanks to the fall. He’d fix it, that and his chest, if two factors didn’t stop him: Warren hacking out blood and streams of fire rushing toward them. No place else to go, the one known as Iceman stretched his powers like he never had, creating a dome of ice around him and his friend.
An orange hue shined through the barrier, and each passing second the orange hue brightened. Bobby felt the ice barrier weaken, layers of cover destroyed by heat, debris, and more random explosions. The floor threatened to give way as cracks criss-crossed it. Diverting precious energy, Bobby filled the cracks and prayed it would hold.
If it didn’t? At least he’d die in a snowball. Kind of appropriate for someone named Iceman.
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Atop a random skyscraper, Sam set his burdens down. “Those collars gotta come off.”
“You could say that again,” grumbled Bishop.
However, Paige had other ideas. “Git this ice offa us first! It’s freezin’!”
A rumble broke into a roar. In the sky, a suspiciously dangerous mass nose-dived straight at them. Instinct moved Sam’s stunned body and wrapped his arms around his three teammates. Digging deep into his mutant power repertoire, a large kinetic blast field erected around the four X-Men.
Boom, boom, boom.
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From behind her came a roar. Caught unaware, Kitty held the blonde baby tighter and hoped whatever mutant had surprised her wouldn’t kill them in one stroke.
Then boom, boom, boom. The ground shook and the store came tumbling down. A slab of roof knocked the back of her head, breaking her attempt to phase. What a way to go, crushed by a building. Before death’s bony fingers closed around her, a familiar displacement washed over her. Felt like... like... teleportation. Like Amanda’s teleportation. Like Illyana’s teleportation.
Like the stepping disks native to Limbo.
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“Everybody, gather around me!”
The students didn’t ask. Six pairs of arms threw themselves around Kurt as the boom, boom, boom, and BOOM boomed, the last one landing too close to Warren’s posh condo. Fractions of a second before the living space turned to ash, Nightcrawler teleported.
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Magneto gasped. Deep within him, another being tried to break to the surface. At first, he thought it was Xorn, but this other consciousness was too reckless. Coughing, he noticed a speckle of blood fly through the air. He looked at his hands, and for a moment, even wrapped under his thick gauntlets, he knew they weren’t his.
“What is happening to me?”
Lorna drew her fist back to her side after punching Storm into Rogue. Pretty little thing just got her insides rearranged. She turned to her father who, for the first time in months, looked confused.
“Papa?”
Primal urges took over. Hunger. Death. His noble cause of mutant liberation disappeared, replaced by a desire to bring chaos to earth. He did the task well. Master would be proud.
Master? Magneto called no one master!
“Papa? Did anyone hurt you?”
This was where he belonged, ruling over his species and guiding them to glory. How could he ever lose sight of that ultimate goal? What plot did his enemies use to lay him low like this?
In the distance, he recognized two people, mostly because they floated in the air like him: Doctor Strange and Captain Britain. How or why Psylocke’s brother was here didn’t add up. What did add up was Strange waving his hands around and chanting and pointing, specifically pointing at Magneto himself. The typical hero types, always sticking their noses where they didn’t belong--Strange had to be at the cause of his problem.
Galvanized, Magneto pulled support girders from surrounding structures and hurled them at the two men. His concentration elsewhere, he didn’t notice the bombs falling until first boom, boom, booms uprooted scads of his followers, flinging them and their severed body parts into the air like ants in a tornado.
Good thing Lorna noticed. She generated an electro-magnetic force field and blocked the two bombs headed straight for them. Metals torn from too many sources enfolded the still falling payload and redirected them elsewhere, most notably toward the Hudson River and back at the fighter planes.
Oh, those humans will pay for trying to harm Papa.
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Mystique kept a white knuckled grip on the life-saving, Oh-Shit bar. About twenty seconds ago, she thought Emma Grace Frost didn’t know how to drive. Right now, she revised that statement: Emma Grace Frost drove but she shouldn’t. The Mitsubishi Eclipse they’d “borrowed” drifted around a 14th Street corner at a peaceful seventy miles per hour. Tires smoked and deafening screeches filled the air as the car fishtailed, spun, and at the last possible moment, regained traction to speed along its merry way.
Flying experimental planes? No problem. Using Forge’s crackpot weapons? No sweat. Dodging Sentinels? Did that before breakfast. Nothing scared Mystique, nothing except for barreling down a crowded street in a flimsy box of sheet metal while weaving around obstacles like mutants, trucks, building pillars, newsstands, and parking meters...
All while relying on the White Queen’s dubious skills.
Yellow eyes dilated to unnatural extremes when the speedometer edged toward a hundred and ten.
On a freeway, that would’ve been fine. Mystique’s problem came when an unmoving, jackknifed semi loomed not half a block away. And Frost showed no signs of slowing. Incidentally, neither did Mystique’s pounding heart.
A hard left pressed the metamorph’s face into the passenger window. The car edged close to the semi’s underside, close enough for her to see the brand name of the spare tires. Interesting--didn’t know Goodyear made tires that big. By some miracle, the expected crash didn’t materialize.
That was the good news. The bad news?
Frost gunned the Eclipse onto the sidewalk, went airborne, plowed through one of Louis Vuitton’s meticulous displays, took out the leather bag section, busted down the front entrance, and skidded onto Broadway.
To the impressive driving, Mystique had one comment. “You’re a fucking maniac!”
An emotionless smile tweaked the diamond lips. “Relax,” said Emma, “I know what I’m doing.”
“That doesn’t help!”
“Well, you could get out if you want to.”
“While you’re going over a hundred?!”
“Never said you’d survive if you did.”
Boom, boom, boom. Clear road one second, craters and fires the next. Emma swerved around a flaming, falling lamppost. A toppled hotdog stand got in the way and demolished the Eclipse’s windshield. With a solid punch, Emma knocked the cracked glass out in time to see a jet of fire ploom at her.
Mystique let go of the Oh-Shit bar, covered, and ducked.
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Boom, boom, BOOM rocked the Empire State Building’s windows, blowing them out like eardrums. Sage ignored the commotion and capitalized on a confused Gambit by landing a solid kick to his kidneys. Always resilient, the Cajun made sure the advantage didn’t last by pushing away the pain and head butting her. Till the explosion, they’d been struggling for the upper hand, him staying close to keep her away from the Professor and her staying even closer to prevent a kinetic attack.
They danced a ballet of grabs and holds. Hands on coat lapel meant forearms crashing onto wrists. A step between the legs resulted in a counter step to the side. The makeshift staff had a supporting role--the weapon was too long to strike but it served as an excellent defender.
Metal on bone hurt.
The Professor wasn’t stupid. As much as he could given his bound limbs, he wormed away, but Tessa wouldn’t let him put more than a yard of distance between himself and the fight. Every cheap shot she could land on him she did, which then forced Remy to defend him, which then exposed the Cajun to possible strikes.
The man was good. Fast. Strong. Smart. Sound technique. He had an eerie concentration, one that focused on many factors with equal scrutiny. Unlike many foes, he didn’t talk either, at least not until the fight was well in hand.
“Tessa, you must stop!”
Another boom, a secondary one not from the S.H.I.E.L.D. fighters she duped into bombing Manhattan. Ruptured gas line? Mutant power? No idea, but didn’t matter. Sage shoved her elbow into Gambit’s sternum and crumbled him with a boot to the knee.
“Stop this madness!”
He had the staff and swung it. She wretched the bar from him, but the precious moments lost let him recover and strike her stomach. An acceptable trade off if her next attack succeeded.
Tired of the Professor’s interjections, Tessa lanced the bar at him. With vigilance and speed, Remy deflected the projectile just enough so that it flipped end over end and knocked Charles silly instead of impaling him.
The two combatants stopped to appraise each other.
Remy huffed and puffed, sweat matting his hair and drizzling down his chin. Scuffs here and there littered his coat. Although Tessa didn’t breathe heavily, she did sweat and wince, and that was about the equivalent of an agonizing cry for another other person. They both had large bruises, the most evident one on the side of Remy’s face.
He wiped a river of perspiration from his eyes. “You pretty good, chere.”
She drew a pair of pistols.
“Dat be bad.”
Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, boom. Boom? What the-
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- To be continued...
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