An eight-foot-tall, five-foot-wide man makes an impression wherever he goes. When the man is clad in an armored costume, and easily walks through a brick wall, people tend to become alarmed. Since this had just happened, there were panicked, fleeing citizens everywhere. Juggernaut lumbered forward, aimed for the bank across the street.
"Hold it right there!" The voice echoed from above. Fortress hovered overhead, positioning himself between the ponderous criminal and the bank. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Please?" Greg stared down at the powerful criminal, trying to remember everything he'd read about him in the X-Men's files.
"I dunno who you are, kid, but you'd better get out of the way. Nobody stops the Juggernaut." His bulky legs pumped forward.
"I didn't think that'd work, but I had to try. In a similar vein..." Greg's eyes narrowed as he concentrated. The forcefield that filled and surrounded his body flowed, then leaped forward. A column of force a foot wide slammed into Juggernaut's chest with a clap of thunder.
He didn't even slow down. The massive armored head swung upward; Greg could make out the smirk inside the helmet. "I hope you've got more than that!" He continued his inexorable march forward.
{Six more minutes. That's all I need,} Fortress thought. "Well, okay, let's try this." Tendrils of force exended down from his hands, brushing against Juggernaut's sides, gently at first, and then more forcefully.
The hulking figure stopped. "What the hell are you doing?" he cried, glaring up at the hovering mutant, batting away the shimmering tendrils of energy.
Greg looked a bit sheepish. "I was kind of hoping you might be ticklish. Oh well."
Juggernaut resumed his advance on the bank. "Jeez, why do I get the weird ones?" he muttered.
"Okay, Juggy. Let's pull out the big guns!" Greg yelled down. Juggernaut paused for a second, glancing up, but didn't look too concerned.
Greg concentrated his field into a blade; tons of force chopped across his adversary's torso in a space no wider than a few atoms. Almost nothing material could resist such an attack.
And the material didn't. Juggernaut's costume peeled back, sliced cleanly open in a three-foot swath. The man's chest underneath was, however, totally unmarked. {Cripes, can he really be that tough?} Greg thought.
Juggernaut frowned. "Kid, you just bought yourself some serious pain. It's damn near impossible to find a tailor who works with unstable molecules!" He reached out and casually yanked a lampost from the sidewalk. Brandishing it like a bat, he stomped forward into the street.
Fortress dipped down a bit, gliding over to his left a little. The giant snarled and swung the post, but he was out of range. He jumped forward, drawing the metal pole back like an overmuscled Babe Ruth preparing to knock one out of the park.
Which was just what Fortress had hoped for. Two blades slashed into the street, cutting out a circle around where Juggernaut landed. A comical look of surprise flashed across the behemoth's face, visible even through his helmet. Juggernaut, and the chunk of pavement he stood on, dropped down into a storm drain with a resounding crash.
Greg shot down and into the bank, eyes darting this way and that, ignoring the cowering tellers and customers. {There has to be one in here somewhere,} he thought. {Aha! Bingo! Come to poppa!} Grasping the object of his search in a pincer of force, he zipped back out over the street outside.
Juggernaut pulled himself up out of the pit, growling. He had lost the lampost somewhere down there. His eyes lit upon Greg, and he started towards the young man with violence in his eyes. But then he pulled up short; something hovered in front of his face.
Greg adjusted the butt-end of the fire extinguisher so that it was an inch from the front openings of the behemoth's helmet. He was holding it from a distance with his field; a tube that surrounded it, leaving the bottom exposed. Juggernaut was bringing his arm up to swat it away, but it was too late. Fortress squeezed.
The was a sodden wet whump as the cannister exploded, the contents blowing out at high speed and pressure. The helmet was instantly, utterly filled with compressed, still-expanding foam. It went into eyes, ears, nose, and mouth; the giant couldn't even choke, there was no room.
Greg smiled with satisfaction as the human tank clawed at his helmet, a small waterfall of foam squirting out of the face and eye holes. Finally he managed to pry it off, and thrashed his head vigorously, looking for all the world like a massive wet puppy trying to shake himself dry. Foam drained in a river from his nose. {Too bad he doesn't need to breathe,} Greg thought.
Juggernaut seemed beyond fury now; though he couldn't see, he clamped onto a parked minivan with his groping hands, and threw it toward Fortress. He came surprisingly close, and Greg dodged to the side, letting it fly harmlessly past.
{Just another minute or two,} he thought happily. He reached out with his field and flipped his opponent onto his back as the giant frantically rubbed at his eyes. Then he heard the scream from behind.
Greg whirled, his heart sinking. The minivan had slammed into a wall and fallen upside-down onto the sidewalk. A middle-aged woman was trapped underneath, the lower half of her body stuck under the hood. {Oh, no!}
He flashed over, trying to figure out the best way to help. "Hang on, I'll get you out of there!", he called, looking over the wreck. {Crud. I can't just pick it up, the metal's bent too much. It might injure her worse.} Instead, he began quickly slashing at the chassis with blades of force, whittling in steel. The woman kept screaming; too late, he noticed her staring behind him.
He tried to turn, but Juggernaut's incoherent roar reached him at the same time as a piledriving backhand slammed into his side. Greg shot across the street, blasting completely through a building into the alley behind it.
Fortress sat up and stared at himself. His right arm, right torso, and both legs were glowing red. "Oh, crap!"
"That's right, kiddo. You're out." The scenery flickered and vanished, leaving just a metal-walled room the size of a school gymnasium. Logan's voice echoed from the command booth above.
Greg sullenly rose, glaring up at the two mutants running his Danger Room session. "I only had like, another minute to go! He couldn't have hurt me that bad with one punch!"
"Oh yes he could, sugar," Rogue called down. "Ah guarantee, he really is that strong. Be glad that was only difficulty three; any higher and you'd be 'dead'. He's smarter and faster than that in real life."
"What was I supposed to do, let that woman die?"
"She shouldn't have been hurt in the first place. You could have stopped that van yourself, but you let it go by. You just can't do that in a crowded city." Wolverine's voice was harsh, and not because of the cigar he was smoking.
"...okay, fine, you got me there. That was a mistake." Greg sounded both irritated and embarrassed. "What's my score?"
Rogue checked the readout. "You were doin' over 90 before that woman got hurt. You came close to the target time, and you picked the right way to try to rescue her, but it still woulda been only a 57. Then Logan gave you fifteen bonus points for creativity. A pass, by two points." Rogue smiled.
"Yeah, I damn near busted a gut laughing when you pulled that fire extinguisher trick. We gotta remember that for next time, eh?" Finally there was some approval in Wolverine's voice.
"I thought that up when I was studying last night." Greg smiled nastily. "If you're near a hardware store, try insulation foam or drywall cement. That'd be even worse."
"Look, kid, you've got a knack for strategy, for coming up with plans nobody expects. And your powers are nothing to sneeze at, either." Then Logan frowned. "Your weakness is tactics. You've got to learn to think on your feet. You forgot about your opponent, trying to rescue that woman. I can't fault your priorities, but you ain't any good to her if you're knocked out and bleeding in an alley, eh?"
"I'll remember next time." Greg frowned.
"Don't feel too bad, honey." Rogue grinned at her boyfriend. "I don't think anyone's been put up alone against Juggernaut before, after only two and a half months of trainin'. We woulda been shocked if you'd actually pulled it off."