Unstoppable

Sam and I are walking through Times Square, pushing Hannah in her Donald Duck buggy as we take in the sights and sounds of central New York. It's Mum's birthday soon, so we're doing some shopping to find her a nice present – which is harder than it sounds; from what Uncle Scott and Aunt Jean have told me, past birthdays have been pretty difficult. In fact, most years they've had to ask her what she wants so that they can avoid having to watch her return things to the shops. Still, I think I know what I can get her that she'll like – I saw an antique katana blade on sale earlier in the month in a store somewhere around here, and I'm hoping that it's still there. It ought to be, since it had a pretty big price tag (Sam and I managed to work out that if we pooled our monthly stipends from the Professor, we'd be able to pay off the credit bill in about twenty years), but I'm not going to count on that. Knowing my luck it's likely to have vanished into a black hole just yesterday, so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed until I actually have it with me.

"Nice day, huh?" Sam says, looking up at the sky as the puffy white clouds above us move across the sun for a moment, streaking the ground with wispy shadows. "Maybe you an' I could go flyin' later?"

"Sounds like a plan to me," I reply. "We'd have to get somebody to watch Hannah for us, though – I'm sure I could persuade Hank to do it. He really seems to love her."

"Maybe that's because she's the only one around here who doesn't get on his case for sheddin' everywhere?" Sam suggests, chuckling. "Even Kurt don't leave as much hair around the mansion as he does, after all."

I laugh. "I suppose not. Anyway, I'll talk to him when we get back. He'll be hanging from the ceiling as soon as I ask him –"

Just then, a deafening crunching of concrete and steel from a few hundred metres away makes me snap my head around, shocked and surprised by the interruption. Clouds of powdered pavement and geysers of steam from ruptured water pipes are filling the air with choking vapour already, which is rolling towards us on the sudden gust of wind the explosion has caused. For a moment I strain to see what has caused the accident, and then I realise exactly what it is. A hugely-muscular green figure is striding out of the cloud, one bulging emerald arm clothed in a spiky steel sleeve and a viciously sharp blade hanging at his waist. His fists are clenched and he is glaring at everything around him – and even from this distance I can hear the growl in his throat as he moves down the street, his massive boots cracking the ground every time they hit it. He swings one huge green fist at a parking meter that happened to be in his way, sending it spinning through the air, slicing through it like a knife, until it hits the window of a nearby department store, shattering it and spraying razor-sharp slivers of glass all over the pavement. All around us, people are screaming as they try to get away from the Hulk, his relentless advance spreading an almost unbearable terror throughout the crowd. If there were fewer people here, I would try to give them all an endorphin booster so that they could be calm again, but with this many minds around, it'd be like trying to put out a forest fire by spitting on it. Sam, we have to get Hannah out of here, quickly. Can you blast her out? I send to him as I try to find an easy way out of the screeching mass of humanity around us.

"I could, but I ain't leavin' you here with the Hulk, either," Sam cries, struggling to make his voice heard over the endless cries of fear. Behind him, the monster roars and picks up the broken remains of a car, throwing it aside like a toy.

"You don't have a choice," I say, handing him our daughter and reaching inside his head to switch on his blasting ability. Before he can protest, he is already a hundred feet in the air... and I'm alone with the Hulk. The towering green monster twists one corner of his mouth up in a half-smile, and crunches more pavement to dust as he walks up to me, looking down at me as if I'm just something he's scraped off the bottom of his boot.

"If I were you, kid, I'd run," he growls, his voice almost physically cutting the air. "I don't have any quarrel with you." He pauses, a dark grimace crossing his features. "Yet."

"Why are you doing this?" I ask him, trying to get some kind of understanding about what he's doing. "What did we ever do to you?"

The Hulk laughs brutishly, and I feel my telepathy tingling a little as a rage-tinted sadness floods his mind. It's about the only clear thing I've been able to sense from his brain up to this point – everything else is so jumbled and broken that just trying to read him is almost impossible. In fact, I think even Uncle Charles would have trouble getting into this guy's brain... "You think this is about you? It's never been about you people. Reed Richards... Tony Stark... Charles Xavier... they're the ones I want. They sent me into space. They turned me into a slave. And they took away my one stinking chance at happiness." He jabs a thumb at his thickly-muscled chest angrily, and spittle flecks his chin as he speaks. "They destroyed my life! I had a wife and a child on the way, and they murdered them both. Do you know how that feels, girl? Do you?" He snorts in contempt. "I don't think so."

"You're wrong," I say quietly. "I have a daughter. I don't know what I'd do if I lost her."

"Then you know you should get out of my way," he replies, stomping forwards like a creature from one of Uncle Bobby's horror films, and looking down at me, holding my gaze effortlessly. It's the first time I've ever been this close to him, and I feel like a flea standing next to an elephant. The Hulk opens his mouth to speak again, but before he can do so, the shriek of a Blackbird's engines sounds overhead. He looks upwards to see the outline of the X-Men's transport aircraft, and then glares at me, grabbing the front of my blouse and hefting me like a ragdoll, rage burning through every segment of his mind. "You did this," he snarls. "You were just trying to hold me here until your little friends arrived, weren't you?"

Panic engulfs me, and I can feel involuntary warmth running down my leg as I see the fury in his eyes. "No," I say desperately, "you don't understand –"

And then I'm flying through the air, as he hurls me across the street in contempt. I let myself go limp, to minimise the impact, as Uncle Logan once taught me in the Danger Room – but even so, I can still hear a loud crack and feel a wrenching sensation as I hit the ground, a double-pronged spike of pain in my chest and shoulder telling me that at least one of my ribs is broken, and my right arm is severely dislocated. I can feel fresh blood flecking my lips, and my head is throbbing from where it bounced hard off the pavement. Looking up through blurry eyes, I can see the Hulk leaping towards the Blackbird as it lands, picking up a slab of rubble and throwing it like a ragged, metal-studded discus towards the X-Men that are leaving the plane. It almost hits Uncle Scott full in the chest before Aunt Lou uses her body to shield him, the rubble crumpling and fragmenting harmlessly onto the floor.

"That ain' playin' fair, y'know," she chuckles, and picks up her own chunk of ruined pavement, before flying towards the Hulk at top speed, her body a blur of green and gold, and using the pavement like a baseball bat, smashing it against the side of the Hulk's head with all the strength she can muster. The Hulk roars, more in annoyance than pain, and lashes out wildly with a massive fist, his eyes so filled with dust from the impact that it isn't even aimed at anything. Aunt Lou dodges it easily, and even though her mind is a total muddle of all the different psyches she's absorbed over the years, I can still feel relief flooding her brain. Jinking inside the Hulk's defences, she unloads with a lightning-fast one-two combination of stinging right and left hooks to the Hulk's jaw. He staggers a little, still snarling with rage, and wraps his arms around Aunt Lou before she can get out of the way. Bellowing, he bear-hugs her, and I can see Aunt Lou's face turning red as the oxygen in her lungs is exhausted. It only takes a few moments before she goes limp and unconscious, and he flings her aside like a broken toy. He has barely enough time to refocus his attention before Sam streaks into him like a missile, slamming a two-handed blow directly into the centre of the Hulk's chest and letting out a wordless scream of anger. It barely fazes the green monster, who takes two steps back and then backhands Sam into the closest building, Sam's blast field protecting him from the impact but also smashing the few remaining supports of the building's ground floor. I can feel the creeping horror in Sam's mind, and then I see him activate his blast field again just as the building finally gives in, tons of concrete and metal plummeting towards the ground. The fact that Sam's mind is still there gives me hope that he'll be all right, and a quick telepathic check tells me that he's relatively uninjured thanks to his blast field protecting him, but that doesn't change the fact that the Hulk is still on his feet and fighting. He shakes his head and clears the last of the dust from his eyes as Uncle Logan starts slashing at him with both sets of claws, needle-fine furrows appearing in the Hulk's skin for a few seconds at a time, dripping small trails of green blood onto the ground as they do so. The Hulk snarls and grabs Logan's right arm, drawing him so close that their eyes are only a few centimetres apart.

"You never learn, do you, runt?" he says in contempt, and then, grabbing Logan's other hand, drives the three claws on it into Logan's throat as far as they'll go, squeezing his wrist tightly so that he can't retract them. The Hulk bellows with rage, his voice booming like a foghorn, and flings Logan aside so hard that he smashes through a wall as if it were made of straw. He hits the ground and then lies there, coughing bright blood until his throat closes up. Not bothering to look back, the Hulk charges towards Uncle Scott, who fires a full-strength optic blast right at the green giant's face. It doesn't even slow him down, so I decide to help Uncle Scott out (against my better judgement, considering how injured I am) with an optic blast of my own, stabbing a ruby-red beam of energy right into the back of the Hulk's right knee. He spins in place, his eyes turned to burning slits. "Bad move, girly," he says. "You side with these idiots, you get exactly what they're getting."

"Sorry, pal, but that ain't happening," says a familiar voice, and I look up to see Uncle Bobby standing over me, all iced-up to almost three times his normal size, his massive ice-gauntlets raised and ready for a fight. "I'm not going to let you hurt her, you hear me?" Holding out his hands, he blasts a whole sheet of ice at the Hulk, encasing the huge beast in a layer of frozen water three metres thick on all sides, including over his head. "There," Bobby says, taking a deep breath. "That should hold him for a few seconds." He holds out one hand and begins to generate an ice-slide with the other. "Come on, kid, let's move. Sam would never forgive me if I didn't get you out of here."

I nod, and grab him around the waist with my good arm. In an instant, we are travelling away from the battle, as fast as Bobby can build the slide. "So tell me, kid," Bobby begins as soon as he feels he can relax, "what made you think you could beat the Hulk?"

"I have no idea," I say through gritted teeth, feeling my cracked ribs and dangling shoulder protesting with every word I manage to force out of my dry, sore throat. "All I wanted to do was distract him while Sam got Hannah out of harm's way. I never wanted to fight him – and I really didn't want to get thrown across the street, either."

"I guess not," Bobby says thoughtfully. He dissolves the ice slide then, looking back at me and seeing how pale I must be right now. "Hold on, I think I can help you with that shoulder. Emma and I have experience with that sort of thing – and it's not what you think, okay, so get your mind out of the gutter. I know your type, kiddo." Gently, he takes hold of my arm, and then forces it firmly back into its socket with a sickening crunching sound. I scream despite my gritted teeth, and he touches my chin with two fingers and his thumb, pushing my head up so that he can meet my gaze. "Good girl," he says. "We'll get you some proper treatment when we get you back to the mansion, I promise, but you're doing really well for now." Nodding down at my arm, he encases it in a sling of ice, the chill soothing and deadening the pain until I'm so numb that I can't feel a thing. "I know this isn't exactly the best idea in the world," he begins, "but it'll keep you going until I can get you home. You have to be a brave girl for me, though, or the deal's off. You think you can do that for your Uncle Bobby?"

"I can give it a shot," I wheeze. Bobby's eyes light up then, and he starts another ice-slide with one hand while squeezing my cold-deadened fingers with the other.

"Great!" he exclaims, getting me to sit behind him in a specially-constructed seat that supports every part of my wounded body as best it can. "You sit tight there, sweetie. We'll be home before you can say 'oh my God, I'm in so much pain I might throw up!'" He turns and winks at me briefly. "You don't have to laugh at that right now. I'll just put it on your tab and you can pay me later. I take laughs or chocolate, by the way. If you still don't want to risk it you could always buy me a slab of the really dark stuff."

That tears it. The laugh I've felt building inside me for the past couple of minutes finally escapes and I can feel the sharp edges of my ribs pressing into my lungs, completely ignoring my need to laugh right now. My amusement quickly turns to a groan of pain, causing Bobby to pause in concern.

"Hey," he says. "Hey, kid – you all right back there? Warren and Betsy would hate it if you got ill or died on my watch, so don't you go doing anything dramatic."

Yes, Bobby, I'm okay, I send to him, bypassing the pain in my chest completely. Although an in-flight movie and a sexy steward would make this even better.

"What, I'm not sexy enough for you?" Bobby says indignantly. "I'm insulted!"

Bobby, trust me, finding you attractive would be like finding Uncle Scott attractive. You're family, so you're kind of off-limits, you know?

"Ouch, Rebecca, just... ouch!" Bobby says, doing his best to look wounded. "I've always been much sexier than Scott, and I'm not even a blood relative. I think you're allowed to want a taste, at least."

That makes me smile. Well, if that's the way you feel... you have a nice arse, Bobby. I reach up with my good hand and pinch his left cheek gently, enjoying the way that he almost jumps out of his skin when I touch him. Like it when the woman makes the first move, do you?

"Oh yeah," Bobby laughs. "I don't know where I'd be if Emma wasn't like that – probably an altar-boy somewhere. Or a televangelist, I dunno. Now, could you do that again on the other side? Just so Righty doesn't get jealous? I hate it when my butt-cheeks fall out with each other. Not being able to poop for three days in a row sucks, you know what I'm saying?" He notices my sudden silence, and I can feel the humour draining out of his mind. "You okay, kid?" he asks, all worried concern again.

I hope Sam's all right, I say. Hold on a minute while I check in with him again. Closing my eyes, I push my mind back towards the battleground and towards the beacon of Sam's mind. Are you all right, Sam? I send to him, and I can feel an incredible relief flood through me as he answers.

Sure am, 'Bec, he replies. Just blasted my way out two minutes after I got stuck. Where the heck are you?

Bobby's got me. He's taking me back to the mansion – I've got a dislocated arm and a fractured rib, at least, maybe some torn muscles too. Staying there was suicide. How's Hannah?

She's okay. I left her with Hank and Jenny, so she ain't exactly on her own. As he speaks I can feel him ducking out of the way of one of the Hulk's massive fists, a flood of relief passing through him as he does so.

Be careful, Sam, I say, urgently.

I'll give it a shot, Sam tells me, trying to inject a little humour into his thoughts, without much success. I'll see you when I get home, okay?

Okay – but please don't be too long. I love you.

Love you too, honey.

With that, I break the connection between us and return to the real world. Bobby looks back briefly and says "Everything kosher between you two? Is Sam all right?"

He's fine. I just wish he wasn't there, that's all. The Hulk is... well, he's worse than you've ever told me he could be. You were there – you saw it just as much as I did. Would you want Emma to be there fighting him without you?

"I guess not," Bobby says thoughtfully. "You know, I can turn around if you want me to –"

I lie back into the freezing cushion Bobby's ice-slide gives me, and sigh, feeling another spike of pain as I do so. I need to see Hannah too, Bobby. I know Sam can take care of himself, but her I'm not so sure about. Besides, just look at me – I'm a wreck. I'd be useless in that fight. I sigh again. Although from what the Hulk told me, I'm not even sure we're doing the right thing fighting him in the first place.

"Seems to me the guy wants a fight no matter who gets in his way," Bobby says, and I can feel his frown even though he is still turned away from me, concentrating on steering his ice-slide towards the mansion. "He's never needed an excuse before. Why would he need one now?"

Because he just lost his wife and his unborn child, I say, and I can instantly feel Bobby's mood change. And I think the Professor might have had something to do with it.

"You're kidding, right?" Bobby says, in disbelief. "The Professor couldn't ever do something like that."

Couldn't he, Bobby? I used to think that, but now I'm not so sure. I shiver, feeling my rib shriek in pain as I do so. One thing I do know, though, is this: I wouldn't want to be in the Hulk's way right now. Something bad is going to happen, and I don't want to be caught in it...