Bobby & Emma's Excellent Adventure
Chapter Six: So Long, Farewell…
The bar is balanced on a knife edge. At any minute the two groups of rival gangsters could start spraying bullets everywhere with those Thompsons of theirs – and that could really make this day worse than it already has been. I glance at Emma with a worried look on my face. Can you calm this down? I think, hoping she'll pick the thought up in amongst all the excitement and terror that's got to be bouncing around her brain – not just her own, but everybody else's as well.
I'm trying, Bobby, she replies, filling me with relief for a second or two, but at this rate, I'm not going to get very far. These people seem to want a fight no matter how many images of puppies or kittens I put into their minds. It's like trying to stop a shark attack by showing it pictures of bleeding fish.
Can't you just push one half of these guys out of here? Maybe that'd work better? I suggest, hoping against hope that Emma's still got enough gas in her psychic tank to get us out of one more scrape.
I can try, but don't expect too much, Emma tells me, shrugging her shoulders and then twisting her face up like a pretzel as pain shoots up her arm. At this rate, I'll need more than a few cups of coffee when we get home. She puts her hands to her temples and narrows her eyes a little, focusing her gaze on the group of bad guys that just came through the door. Even from a distance, it's obvious when she's taken control of them – their posture changes, the look in their eyes is altered, and they all let their violin cases stay closed. As quickly as they came in, they leave, and the bar is filled with only one group of lowlifes again.
Lisa whistles with relief. "I thought we were in real trouble there," she says, and leans back against the bar so that she can loosen out the knots her shoulders obviously tied themselves into.
I nod in agreement. "Yeah – could have got real ugly, real fast." Then I take a sip of the nuclear fuel that passes for booze in this time. I cough and splutter, trying to clear my throat so that I can speak again. "Damn, this crap is evil," I wheeze. "I think I can still taste the old socks it was stewed in."
Emma chuckles. "Oh, I don't know – I think 'old sock' is a pretty interesting flavour, myself."
"We'd be better off just drinking anti-freeze," I suggest, finishing my glass and shuddering as the taste leaves my mouth. "That way we could just skip to the 'going blind' part pretty quickly, and not have to worry about rotting our taste-buds."
"Sounds like a good idea to me, Bobby," Lisa says as she examines the bottom of her empty glass. "Looks like there are things growing in this. Maybe we should leave?"
Emma stiffens suddenly, and shakes her head. "I don't think that would be a good idea right now," she says hurriedly. "Bobby, ice the front window up. Make it thick, but try to keep it clear."
"What's the matter, Emma?" I ask, a little confused.
"Quickly!" Emma hisses. Shrugging, I hold my hands up and spray a thick layer of ice across the inside of the windows – and it's then that Lisa and I see why Emma was so agitated. A Model T cruises past the window, and one of its passengers stands up in his seat and opens fire with a machine gun. The glass of the front window is smashed, but the thick ice behind it holds firm as everybody in the bar instinctively dives for cover. Even the tough guys sitting in the corner have thrown themselves behind their upturned table, and all of them have unloaded their tommy guns from their cases and are getting ready to go outside and deal out some payback.
"Should we stop them?" Lisa suggests. "They could get people hurt if they start shooting the street up."
"Good idea," I say, icing myself up from head to foot and holding out my hand for Emma to follow us. "You coming, Emma?"
Emma rolls her eyes. "I don't suppose I've got much a choice, have I?"
The three of us get outside in time to see the two groups of hoodlums with their guns drawn. Unless we stop them, there's going to be a lot more than just a hot time in the old town tonight. Looking at the one nearest to me, I can see him tightening his finger on the trigger of his gun, ready to spray lead across the street, so I close my fist and spray a thin coating of ice across his eyes to throw off his aim, before extending a thin stream of ice out towards the gun itself. It collects around the gun's heavy drum magazine and I'm able to yank it out of the guy's hands before he can open fire properly.
"Playtime's over, kid," I say, increasing the size of my right hand with several layers of ice and then crushing the gun's barrel with one simple flex of my fingers. "Now if you don't behave yourself I'll have to take away your candy privileges, too." The guy is understandably angry, and his attention becomes focused totally on me once he's cleared the ice out of his eyes. Oddly, though, there's none of the panicked surprise that's been common in people seeing my ice-form since Mojo sent us on this crazy time-hopping journey – he just looks pissed as hell and ready to plug me one.
Kinda refreshing, in a weird sort of way.
He reaches into his pin-striped jacket for something, and his hand emerges with a Smith & Wesson revolver. He manages to get one shot off, but the thick ice on my hand acts like a flak jacket and absorbs the impact without many problems. "What did I just say?" I tell him, wagging my finger. "No more candy for you, mister. Not until you learn how to behave, anyway."
To my left, I can see Lisa throwing a couple of well-aimed fastballs made up of her glue-like mucus straight at the two hoods trying to close in on her. One splatters in a guy's face, and the other clogs the barrel of his buddy's gun. Either way, they're both out of commission long enough for her to close in and kick one guy right in the teeth and jam a fist into the other thug's gut. They both drop to their knees then, clutching the injured parts of their bodies and grunting loudly. She catches me looking at her and winks one of her big compound eyes. "Doing good, aren't we?" she says brightly, before pointing behind me with one chitin-tipped finger. "Better go help your girlfriend, if you want her to speak to you again."
Turning, I see Emma batting aside a guy's grasping fingers with her good hand while trying to get enough focus to use her powers. Time to play the knight in shining armour, I guess…
Holding out my hands, I concentrate and fire a few concentrated ice-blasts at the guy, gluing his legs to the street and pinning his hands to his sides. That gives Emma enough time to reach into his head and switch him off from the inside out. She looks at me with something that looks like gratitude – but if there's one thing I've learned about Emma, it's not to take her at face value. She raises her eyebrows and says "I suppose I owe you a 'thank you', don't I?" She grins. "I'll give it to you when we get home."
I roll my eyes. The Spineless Ones are probably eating that one up on Mojoworld. Fat weirdoes are probably running out of popcorn, too. Turning back the way I came, I can see that the rest of the guys from the car have all made good their escape. Better to leave the ones we caught for the cops, I suppose – it'll make less trouble for us if we can keep this as quiet as possible. "How's your arm?" I ask Emma, still scanning the street for any possible trouble.
Emma walks up beside me, flexing the fingers of her good hand a little, and then looks down at the makeshift cast on her broken arm. "As good as it's going to get until I can get proper medical treatment, I suppose," she says, before a look of inspiration comes across her face. "You know, Drake, seeing as we're in a time that actually has access to things like aspirin and plaster casts, do you think there's an outside chance we could get this fixed?" She looks over at Lisa, who's finished binding the fallen crooks with long, thin strings of her mucus and is walking over to us with her long fingers clenched. "I appreciate this cast you made for me, darling, but I'd rather not go around looking like my wrist got sneezed on by an elephant any longer than I have to. How do you get these things off every morning?"
"I kick them," Lisa replies. "They're usually pretty brittle after eight hours, so it doesn't really need that much effort. Right now, that's probably going to need a saw to get through." She jerks a thumb down the street. "I think I saw some kind of surgery down that way. You want to bet they'll have some tools like that?"
Emma scowls. "You really think I'm going to go and get treatment from a back-alley butcher? That man probably has more experience in digging out bullets than he does in proper medical procedures."
"Look, honey," Lisa sighs, rubbing her brow with one hand, "I don't know if you've noticed, but we don't exactly have a lot of choice. So either you take the chance, or you go without, okay?"
"She does have a point, Em," I say, instinctively knowing that I'm going to regret this later. "I'd take what you can get now, and hope Hank can fix you up properly when we get home."
"You do realise I could brain-wipe the pair of you right now," Emma states flatly, her eyes cold as yesterday's embers. "But, in the interests of peace and harmony, I'll be gracious and leave you with enough brains to get us home."
"Gee, I don't know how we'd manage without you," Lisa says, one of her eyebrows arched as high as it will go. "Now come on. I don't think he'll stay open for much longer."
She walks down the street to the flickering lamp that marks the surgery – such as it is – and knocks on the door. Someone who I guess is the doctor opens the door after stumbling loudly towards it, and I begin to think that maybe Emma's suspicions might have some basis in fact. The guy has at least three days' worth of beard growth, his hair is uncombed, and his shirt is rumpled and looks like it hasn't seen an iron in about a year. "Yes?" he snaps.
"We have someone here who needs medical treatment," I say, pointing towards Emma's injured hand. "We thought you could help us out."
"Payment up front," the doctor says, holding out one blunt-fingered hand. "Three hundred bucks, or you don't get nothin'."
Emma glances towards him, and tips her head slightly to one side. "I don't think that'll be necessary, do you?"
"No, I guess not," he says slowly.
What, did you actually expect me to pay this troll? Emma sends to me. I'm getting what I need and he won't even remember giving it to me. It's the perfect crime. She winks at me and then follows the doctor into his dark and pretty grim-looking surgery. He directs Emma to sit down on a chair, and then sits down opposite her.
"What can I do for you?" he says. Emma nods at her arm, and flexes the fingers gently to emphasise the problems she's been having.
"I need this properly set. I've been wearing this stopgap solution for far too long."
The doctor leans closer to her arm and prods Lisa's mucus-cast with one finger. "Jesus. What the hell is this stuff?"
"You… really don't want to know," Emma says. "Just trust me when I say I shall be very glad to get it off me." She sees the doctor start to pick up a scalpel, and shakes her head. "You'll need something bigger than that if you want to cut through it. Something like that over there, for instance." She nods towards a bone-saw that's hanging on a hook on one of the walls. It doesn't look all that clean – in fact I'm pretty sure I can see some dried flecks of blood clinging to its cutting teeth – but I guess it'll be okay if it doesn't cut her skin.
Not that I'm putting much faith in this guy to be that precise…
The doctor begins sawing, and the saw's sharp teeth cut through the solidified mucus pretty easily, until he's able to pull it apart and help Emma ease her arm out. Then, he reaches for a proper dressing and drapes that across the wound before binding it all tightly with some bandages and a couple of splints. "I'm afraid I can't make you a proper cast with what I've got here," the doctor says, confirming what Emma had thought might happen, "but I can make sure you'll be okay for as long as you need to be until you can get to a hospital, okay?"
Once Emma's arm is tightly bound up, she stands, examines the doctor's work, and then smiles as broadly as she can (which isn't much, to be honest. I think it goes against the ten commandments of Versace to be that open with your emotions). "Thank you, Doctor," she says, before she walks towards the hallway and the way out of this dirty excuse for a surgery. "I'll be sure to visit you again if I ever need anything else."
We get out onto the street and everything seems to have quietened down. Nobody even takes any notice of the guys lying pinned to the ground. Either they're so used to seeing gangsters taking each other out that it doesn't register with them any more, or they just don't want to get involved because they might get taken out themselves. Then, suddenly, a woman passer-by in a heavy coat stops and kneels by the side of one of the hoods, touching his face with one of her hands. Then she turns her head to look at us, and asks "Did you do this?"
"We didn't have a choice," I tell her as firmly as I can. "They were going to kill each other."
The woman raises an eyebrow. "Who said I was condemning you? These men have been terrorising our neighbourhood for months – it's about time somebody took them to school." She smiles broadly and her eyes begin to shine with an unearthly glow. "It's good television." Then, she stands, casts off her heavy coat, and unfolds her other four arms. "Lord Mojo is very pleased – he thinks you can go home soon." She chuckles insanely then, her head tipping slightly to one side, like a bird looking at a piece of tinfoil. But you're not finished yet, screwloose. We have one more task for you."
"What next?" Emma says, exasperated. "Are we going to have to dress up like knights and joust each other to death – because if we do, I'm not co-operating."
Spiral giggles. "Oh, much better than that, Blondie – much better. This is Lord Mojo's biggest production for years… and you can't end a big production these days without a big song and dance number." She clicks her fingers, and the static display melts in around us once again, leaving us all to wonder where we're being taken next. Spiral seems to sense that, so she continues "Mojoworld awaits us all. Do well there, and you can go home. Don't do your best, and you'll end up cancelled." She snickers. "Wouldn't want to end up like Joanie Loves Chachi, would you?"
The static fades, and the three of us – all of whom have thankfully been returned to our usual appearance – are suddenly looking at the enormous, bloated form of Mojo himself, who cackles madly and flexes his claws a little before pushing a few buttons on the console of his mechanical walker. "Hello, good evening and welcome," he says in the screeching, insane voice that seems to go out of its way to sound more like nails scraping down a chalkboard with every word he speaks. "Welcome indeed, to Homo Superior Deathmatch! It's fast, it's furious and you'll all be wondering if your favourites will survive." He taps another couple of buttons and the platform that Emma, Lisa and I are standing on starts moving downwards, towards a sandy arena that has body parts scattered all around it, along with large dark red splashes of dried blood. "So get ready, sports fans, as this week's award-winning show kicks off once more! You'd have to be insane to miss it!"
Oh, for God's sake. Why doesn't he just go the whole way and shout "Let's get ready to rumble"? Emma sends to me, sourly.
When the platform reaches the ground, I step forwards, ice myself up, and try not to get too anxious about what's coming next. After fighting a mob of T-Rex, skeletons and some mobsters, this should be a piece of cake.
I hope.
Mojo starts his crowing again, as spotlights focus on me. "Introducing first, the cold-hearted clown with a killer sense of humour – the one, the only Iceman!" Then the spotlights shift to Emma. "And his tag-team partners – she's sharp as diamond and twice as sexy. It's the White Queen, Spineless Ones!" And finally, the lights shine on Lisa. "And here's the unknown quality, my friends – she's the winged avenger with a heart of gold: Lisa Burrows!"
"This guy gave you problems?" Lisa says, pointing her thumb at Mojo's control booth. "Seems just like an overweight network executive to me."
"Yeah, he –" I begin, before the lights switch to the other side of the arena, where three doors are slowly opening. I don't like the look of this…
Mojo cackles a little before continuing with his insane monologue. "And their opponents – first, from the deepest depths of my imagination: Frostbite!" The first door opens to reveal what looks like an ogre made out of ice, carrying a giant club that looks like it's actually part of his hand. "And his tag-team partners – first, to counter the White Queen, you need a Black Diamond!" The second door opens as a slinky black-clad woman with deathly-pale skin sashays out onto the bloody sand. She's wearing a mask that leaves her mouth uncovered (so that her mouthful of sharp fangs can still be seen) and carries a whip, and looks like she means nothing but business. "And finally: Buzz-Killer!" The last door creaks open, and a hulking seven-foot giant stalks out. He's got long black wings, large compound eyes, and his hands are tipped with vicious claws – and from what I can see from where I'm standing, it looks like there's some kind of poisonous gas coming from his mouth and nostrils. Before I can get a closer look at any of the three, Mojo shouts "Let the games begin!"
The ice-ogre starts stomping towards me, swinging his club angrily. Instantly, I know that without any additional protection he'll turn me into a greasy smear of slush on the arena floor, so every part of my body gets at least five or six extra-thick new layers of ice. I end up standing about two or three feet taller than I had been before, which still only brings me up to this guy's ugly-ass chest, which is covered with ice-warts and scars like the Grand Canyon. He swings the club in his right hand towards me, and I'm just about able to duck, while spraying a wide arc of sharp ice-darts at his legs. They all hit and stick into his frozen skin, making him roar with anger and try to punch me with his left fist. I duck, but he catches me with a glancing blow on my right shoulder. Instantly it goes numb, even through the ice-shell, and I find myself trying not to panic as my right hand goes completely dead, numbed beyond all sensation.
Okay… this could be better.
Next to me, I can see Emma sizing up her own opponent, who cracks her whip and grins crazily at her, the sharp teeth gleaming in the harsh lights of the arena. The whip lashes out, like a snake striking, but Emma has the sense to throw up her good arm to stop it. The whip coils around her forearm, making her cry out in pain, but she's able to drag the woman forwards and pull her off-balance. It only lasts for an instant, though, as the woman uses her forward momentum to launch herself into a cartwheel and come up on both feet again. Emma strikes as aggressive a stance as she can manage, but I can feel that she knows she won't last long with an injured arm against a homicidal acrobat who's got more weapons than she has, and is in full health.
Meanwhile, Lisa is trying to fend off the big insect-man, whose vapour is making her cough and wheeze. In fact, it's doing more than that: it's making her knees shake and her chest heave. Seems like it's an actual insecticide – Lisa looks like she's about to faint and puke all at the same time, but she's still spitting out fat chunks of her mucus and trying to throw them so that they cover her foe's eyes, as well as try to keep as out of the way of the vapour as she can.
Time to take charge of this situation – and the old solutions are always the best ones… "Guys, we need to switch dance partners!" I shout out as I duck under another huge punch from the ice-ogre, hoping that Emma and Lisa are both able to hear me over the sounds of fighting. "Emma, you take Frosty here, and Lisa, I'll take the Tick, which leaves you with Miss Whiplash. Everyone cool with that?"
"I suppose," Emma begins, as she narrowly avoids another slashing blow from the pale woman's lash, "that I don't have a choice." She and I quickly switch places so that she's standing in front of the giant. If I'm right, he's probably got all kinds of fail-safes built in against my powers – but against Emma's telepathy, he's likely to be less well-protected.
It's a gamble, for sure, but I hope this one will pay off, unlike the bet I put on the Rangers last week. Ducking out of the way of the Goth girl's whip, Lisa and I complete our changing of the guard, and then I'm stood up against the insect-man that was giving her so many problems. When he closes with me I can immediately tell what got Lisa so irritated – the guy's breath is almost bad enough to make me lose my lunch. Raising up both my hands, I coat his mouth with a thick bar of ice, to prevent most of the gas from escaping. It still smells a little, but it's much better than before. He tries to take to the air after clawing at the ice with both of his hands, but I quickly aim a couple of surgical ice-blasts at his wings, linking them together right when he's about to take off, and he ends up sprawling face-first in the bloody dirt. With my increased size, it's easy for me to knock him out with one punch to the side of the head from my iced-up right fist. As I do so, I can hear Emma grunting with effort as she grabs hold of the ice-ogre's small mind, and then makes him use his club to flatten the nimble whip-girl with a decisive hammer-blow, before ordering him to smash himself unconscious in the same way. He crashes to the ground like an ancient tree, making the floor shake for a second or two.
Right then, Mojo shrieks in disgust as his champions are laid low. "Intolerable! Insolent! Unacceptable! You three are cancelled! Cancelled! Cancelled! Spiral, get rid of them!"
At his side, Spiral simply smiles – her face is magnified dozens of times by the big screens all around the arena, so it's easy for us to see what's going on at the top of Mojo's podium – and bows. "As you wish, my lord." Then she dances off the podium, vanishes, and reappears next to us. "I warned you, little X-Men," she chuckles. "Don't expect Lord Mojo to come calling again. You've just jumped the shark. He hates that."
"My heart bleeds," Emma sneers. "I don't want to have to stay here a moment longer than I have to."
Spiral laughs again, and spins around on one foot to create the familiar static vortex around us, and this time it only takes a moment for it to fade. When it does, we find ourselves stood in the front garden of the Xavier Institute, with stars twinkling down on us from a cloudless sky. "That's all, folks!" Spiral says, before she dances herself back to Mojoworld and leaves us all standing out in the cold.
Lisa looks up at the mansion's frontage and then says "I hate to be a burden, but do you guys think you could take me back to my place? This isn't my house, after all."
"There are enough rooms for you to stay the night, Lisa," I say firmly. "It's the least we can do after getting you dragged into this mess. Isn't it, Emma?"
Emma raises her eyebrows. "I suppose so. I'll find you some nightclothes you can change into, too. Just because I'm feeling generous." She pads quietly into the front hall then, leaving Lisa and me alone for just a second. Lisa points after her with a small smile on her face.
"Is she always this nice to guests?" she asks wryly.
"Believe it or not, this is her being accommodating," I laugh. "Come on. I'll find you a room and you can sleep this whole experience off…"
After finding Lisa some pyjamas and a spare room, Emma and I are also getting ready for a good eight hours' worth of sleep. "Nice time we had tonight, huh?" I say, picking up my copy of the latest Tom Clancy novel so that I can read a few more chapters before going to sleep. Emma looks daggers at me, putting down her reading glasses and her own book so that she can focus her glare right on me.
"I hope you're joking, Bobby," she says. "You do know that tonight was probably the worst date I've ever had with anybody, ever?"
I sigh. "Oh, c'mon, it wasn't that bad, was it? You got to make a T-Rex into your own little puppy dog, didn't you? And we made a new friend, too. See? It wasn't all gloom and doom."
"The only thing that could make it worse, Bobby, is if you try and cap this evening off by trying to get me to have sex with you. I'm so not in the mood tonight that you could turn into Harrison Ford before my eyes, and I'd still say no."
"Not even if I called you my princess?" I say, digging at her ribs gently with a fingertip.
Emma squirms away from me with a sour look on her face. "Not even."
"Not even if I started talking dirty Star Wars-style? Meesa Bobby Drake, and meesa gonna make yousa a happy lady!"
"You're an idiot, Drake," Emma replies, rolling her eyes. "As if anybody would find that moronic character sexy."
"Not even if I started calling you Grand Admiral Frost, and asked for permission to dock my Star Destroyer?"
"Now you're getting desperate, Drake," Emma laughs. "We both know you're nothing more than a frigate anyway. But 'Grand Admiral Frost' has a nice ring to it. Start there, and maybe you might get lucky…"
The End.