Waiting on the world to change...

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

Sarge crouches beneath cover and waits for the grenade to go off. Fucking muties. They made her sick. She wasn’t old enough to remember what it was like when it first started, but she’d seen the likes of Magneto in recordings. Most of the so-called ‘homo superior’ were just that - superior. Or they liked to think of themselves that way, as if baseline human was something to be ashamed of. It wasn’t as if it was their fault for being mutants - God knew that was the dice roll genetics had given them. That sick bitch Emma Frost, out in California, for example. Her crusade had killed thousands of innocent people, scorched the western coast. And for what?

No. Concentrate. The Colonel would want them to take care of this filth. What’s taking so damn long? Don’t tell me it’s a dud - -?!

All of a sudden, everything happens at once. Near their target, the frozen door explodes, sending millions of shards of ice up into the air. The fine powder obscures her vision, but there’s certainly a flare of light near it. A figure steps through the explosion. She hears Deke swear viciously, and movement out of the corner of her eye. Shit.

_________

As Josh enters through the now-destroyed doorway, it’s difficult to see, thanks to the ice particles in the air. A flare of light on the ground a few feet away catches his eye. Grenade? Shit -

> "My turn."

The flames leap towards one of the five soldiers, but Josh is already moving, dodging gunfire. John has the grenade covered. He’d felt Bobby’s panic, that something was about to happen. Fortunately, they’d averted one crisis… but they weren’t out of it yet. Bobby! He throws a hand towards Bobby, who seems to be immobilized somehow. The other boy skids across the ground and tips over behind a metal crate. Gunfire bursts through the air he’d been occupying only a moment ago.

Josh opens his hands and swings them close together. Across the melee, two soldiers smash into each other, helmets colliding violently. They double over, clutching their heads.

Warren’s voice, from what seems like ages ago, echoes through Josh’s mind. Use your agility, and get closer! They can't shoot what they can't hit! With a telekinetically-assisted leap, he launches himself at their foes. One quick parry and a rifle drops to the floor. A body smashes into the ceiling, and drops to the ground.

Fire twists around the cluster of figures, but somehow Josh is untouched. I guess John has more control than I thought. As gunfire tracks him, Josh drops to one knee and rolls forward, lancing a telekinetically-enhanced punch into someone’s knee.

[Bobby Drake]

> " H-how 'bout next winter we try an' s-swing it so n-neither of us get need rescuing? "

That would have elicited a laugh, if Bobby had been able to spare the attention from the bizarre task of assembling his body.

In some ways it’s easier this time; he’s pretty confident that it’s possible, and that he knows how to do it. It’s almost instinctive, actually… he’s not really sculpting the ice, just letting it grow naturally. It feels like something he’d read once from a sculptor who merely chipped away the extraneous rock to release the sculpture hidden inside.

But in other ways it’s much more difficult, more draining. It feels like he’s been running a marathon, even though he hasn’t actually moved since the project started, and he’s hitting some kind of endurance wall he doesn’t entirely understand, where each new second feels just as exhausting as the entire time before put together… and though he knows he can’t keep this pace up, he doesn’t know how to stop, or even slow down. It has taken on a pace of its own… the only question is whether he’ll be conscious, or even alive, when it’s done.

Already his consciousness has narrowed, bit by bit, until now he’s focused almost exclusively on his own body. He doesn’t notice the telekinetic pulse that drags him behind cover, or the firefight going on around him. Still, the roar of flame when Sarge’s incendiary grenade goes off catches his attention, as does the artificial way it twines around him without actually touching him. Good, he thinks in a somewhat distracted fashion, suspecting that he would not be able to reconstruct himself a third time.

His awareness of his environment returns as the last pieces of his ice-form grow into place. A moment later it departs again, as his body reverts to flesh, spontaneously, for the first time in two days.

When he wakes up, hours later, he’ll be as ravenous and exhausted as if he hasn’t eaten or slept in 48 hours… which, of course, he hasn’t. For now, he’s unaware of that, or of anything else, as he measures his length on the floor.