Hey everyone! Little one-shot here. We're going back in time to when the new recruits were coming in, I would have written it then, but I like to be a bit behind the crowds. Anyways, I was reading a story that mentioned Bobby's recruitment, but it didn't go into any detail. So, I made up my own, and just telling you now, it may be totally AU, because I've only read 2 comics.. Hope you like it, R&R please!
Bobby had a normal life. He went to a normal school, had a normal girlfriend, and normal friends. If someone told him that in a few weeks, he would befriend a werewolf, a 12-year-old copy machine, a fireworks maker, and a human cannonball, he would have said they were nuts.
"Hey, Bobby, want to go shoot some hoops?" one of his friends asked.
"Nah," Bobby said, "I've got a date with Mandy tonight."
Yes, Bobby's life was perfect. He was going to pick Mandy up, they were going to walk to the theaters, have dinner at the local hamburger joint, and then an ice cream cone. It was going to be a good night, or, so he thought.
The night started out great, the movie was fantastic, the cheeseburgers were…cheap, but still enjoyable, and Bobby hadn't done anything stupid or embarrassing.
It wasn't until they were walking to the ice cream parlor that things turned sour. When two guys 'accidentally' bumped into them, Bobby thought it was okay, it wasn't until they turned around, holding a knife to Mandy's throat that he knew he was in trouble.
"Let go of her!" Bobby yelled, to which they laughed.
"What are you going to do about it?" the one who wasn't holding the knife to Mandy's neck was grabbing her purse.
Bobby paused, what was he going to do about it? He had never been a fighter, a fact that he always tried to hide, and he had no idea what to do.
"Doesn't look like he's going to do anything," the other one said.
"Yeah, seems like he's too chicken to save his girlfriend," the first guy said.
"Bobby! Do something!" Mandy screamed, trying to hold off the knife that was dangerously close to her neck.
Bobby was furious. Why hadn't he paid attention to that self-defense course in PE? He could probably do something- think of something to do, if it wasn't so cold. So cold…why was he so cold? It was the middle of April.
"Ahhhh!" Mandy screamed. Bobby lunged forward, thinking that the guy was hurting her, but the closer he came, the louder she screamed.
"What's wrong?" he asked, looking around, seeing if there was some other unspeakable terror around. But he didn't see anything, until he looked down at his hand.
"What the heck…?" Bobby yelled, looking at his arm in horror. It was completely transparent; it looked like it was made of ice.
"What…what is that thing?" one of the thugs asked, as he threw down Mandy and ran. The other one was soon to follow him.
Bobby watched them run away; feeling a bit of satisfaction, even though he had no clue what was going on with his body. He reached an icy hand down to help Mandy up, but she looked at him in horror.
"Help!" she screeched, her voice filled with pure terror, as she backed away from him, until she hit the edge of a building.
"He was over here," Bobby heard a voice say from around the corner.
"Young man, why did you drag us all out here?" another voice said.
"You won't believe this," Bobby recognized the voice as one of the thugs, "we were…talking to this guy and this girl, and all of a sudden, he turns into this ice cube!"
"Ice cube, what do you mean?" another voice asked.
"You got to see it to believe it," the first guy said.
By now, Bobby could see a large group of people coming towards him.
'Shoot' he thought to himself. He had to think of something- and fast. He didn't know who was coming, he couldn't see any faces, but he knew from movies that even the kindest people could turn into an angry mob against things they didn't understand.
Suddenly, something inside him told him to stick his arm out. He did so, and by sheer force of will made a huge slide, a slide of what looked like ice. He didn't know how he did it, but he wasn't about to stop and think about it. He hopped on the slide, and started sliding on it.
Unfortunately, he had never been much of a skateboarder, or anything that could give him a sense of balance. He fell off just as quickly as he got on. And the crowd of people wasn't that far behind him.
Bobby was forced to run, looking back every once in a while, and throwing back patches of ice. He didn't have a clue how he did it, and sometimes it didn't work, but every time he threw a patch down, more people slowed down. Sadly, they never seemed to slow down as a whole.
"What is your problem?" Bobby asked. "I was just trying to help Mandy."
Some of the people looked like they weren't as violent, but most of them just ran faster. It had slowed Bobby down to talk, and the people in front were gaining on him.
He was getting tired, this ice making was exhausting. He started to slow down. He started to think that his muscles were on fire, but quickly stopped himself, fire was the last thing one would use to describe him right now.
Suddenly, a boy appeared out of nowhere. He stood in Bobby's path, but he quickly shoved him out of the way, afraid that he was part of the group after him.
"Bobby, wait!" the boy called, running after him.
Bobby looked at the boy, never slowing down, just a quick glance behind him. The boy was tall and thin, and had a pair of odd looking sunglasses.
"What do you want?" Bobby asked as the boy caught up with him.
"Listen, I know what's going on, I'm here to help you," the boy explained.
"Help me? Why would you need to do that? Oh, is it the angry mob behind me that gave you a clue?" Bobby said sarcastically. "What could you do to help?"
The boy grinned. "Watch," he said. He put a hand to his sunglasses, and a beam of light came from his eyes.
Bobby stopped running, but after realizing that he was made entirely of ice right now, he decided he was just as much a freak as this guy, and continued running.
"Hey, the other kids a freak too!" one person said from the crowd.
"Great, now they're after you too- hey! You did help! Now there'll be less people after me," Bobby exclaimed.
The boy gave him a funny look. This didn't seem like the right place to be cracking jokes, not with two dozen people after them.
Bobby started melting; making ice was really tiring, especially since he still didn't know what was happening.
"Hey, shades," Bobby said, panting, "I'm tired, any chance of you being able to get us out of here?"
"There's a plane coming in 10 minutes," the boy said. "We just need to survive until then."
They were both slowing down, the boy didn't look tired, but he was sticking with Bobby.
"Hey man," Bobby said, "you keep going, maybe you can get me out of here, if you get caught, we're both stuck."
"Don't worry," the boy looked like he had an idea. "Okay, start slowing down, and power down, would ya? I'm freezing just standing by you."
Bobby looked at him like he was crazy. "If we slow down, we'll get caught," he pointed out, but he powered down anyways.
"Hey, I know what we're doing," the boy said. "Oh, by the way, I'm Scott, Scott Summers."
By now, the crowd had caught up to them. The two thugs grabbed Bobby, and three other people grabbed Scott. Something in the back of Bobby's mind was telling him that he should be upset that it only took two people to hold him instead of three, but he had bigger things to worry about. Like the fact that he knew half the people in the crowd, a fact that terrified and disgusted him.
Some people had grabbed some rope, and wound it around Bobby's and Scott's wrists, behind their backs. Another person wrapped a different piece or rope on each of their necks, and strung the other end off a limb of a tree.
"Wait a second," one of the thugs stopped them. He walked up to Scott, and ripped the sunglasses off his face. Scott shut his eyes immediately. "Not so tough without your magic sunglasses, are you?" he asked. Obviously, he thought the sunglasses gave Scott his power, because he put them on, and tried to shoot them. "Hey, these don't work!" he exclaimed.
Scott figured out what he was doing. "Here, let me show you how it's done," he said, and opened his eyes.
The beam of lights shot through his eyes again, knocking out everybody near him. It was an incredible blast, destroying everything near them, and probably killing some of the closer people.
Scott wriggled out of the noose around his neck, and after a few seconds, got out of the ropes binding his hands. He helped Bobby out, and said, "Okay, this isn't exactly how I wanted us to first meet. I'm sort of a recruiter for my school, one for people like us. I was sent here to ask you to join."
Bobby thought for a second. Leaving his home, where his mom would probably kick him out, his girlfriend, who was already terrified of him, and his town, where people had tried to hang him.
"What, and leave all this?" Bobby asked. Then he sobered up a bit, he was a clown, but this was no longer funny. He took Scott's outstretched hand. "Let's go," he said. And that was the end of the old Bobby Drake, leaving room for the new him, the Iceman.