Written by Darkstorm5000
Disclaimer: The X-Men and related characters in their various incarnations are the property of Marvel Comics and Marvel Enterprises.
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Part 2- And Along Came A Spider…
A/N: This story takes place after Spider-Man 2.
Just blocks away from Times Square sits Dimitri's, a quaint but very cozy dining establishment in the heart of New York City. And while Dimitri's could be described as modestly-upscale, it was still not the kind of place that one would expect to find a man, who is both owner and editor-in-chief of his own newspaper, to frequent on a more than consistent basis. Then again, you could also say the man himself was also unlike any other.
"Waiter…Waiter!" An acrimoniously scathing voice now bellowed, which could be heard throughout the entire restaurant by all of its other patrons
"Yeesss Mr. Jameson, is there a problem?" The individual assigned for the evening to one of Dimitri's VIP tables slowly articulated, as he came over dressed in a black waiter's tuxedo, complete with black bow-tie, linen napkin across his forearm, and a snooty attitude to boot.
"You'd better believe there's a problem! Me and my wife came here for a quiet evening, not to sit here and listen to some demolition crew go to work! Just what the devil's going on outside!" J. Jonah Jameson, the owner of the Daily Bugle seethingly replied, as he sat across from his wife at their table in the restaurant, and was dressed in his customary starched and pressed 3-piece suit. JJ Jameson was referring to the numerous seismic reverberations that he, and the rest of the patrons in the restaurant, had felt pass through the floor beneath them.
"Apparently, a small group of angry mutants have gathered a few blocks up from us, and are now engaged in some sort of street fight with Spider-Man." The waiter revealed, as he repeated to his customers what he had heard from a curious cook in the back, who had briefly slipped out of the restaurant's back door to go investigate the cause of the commotion.
"Spider-Man…hmmph! Well, I say it's well-past time that someone went and taught that wall-crawling menace a lesson." Jameson grumbled in response, as he looked back down at the menu in his hands and continued reading through it, in spite of the fact that he always ordered the steak frites, or steak and French fries, every time he dined at Dimitri's.
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Meanwhile, blocks up from that very restaurant…
A desperate confrontation was now about to erupt, as Spider-Man, Iceman, and Firestar were preparing to take on three powerful members of the infamous Brotherhood of Mutants. And, it would be the first super-powered conflict that the city had seen in a number of months, not since the Fantastic Four fought and successfully stopped the fiendish villain known as the Mole Man and his army of subterranean creatures. But, while preventing them from taking over New York City, the FF4 had inadvertently wound up turning much of midtown-Manhattan into a war-zone in the process.
"…just your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man at your service, and here to help even up these lop-sided odds too."
"Well boys, looks like we got ourselves a major fight on our hands." The Blob said to Pyro and Avalanche, as he used his massive, mutant-controlled girth to quickly and easily break free from the webbing that Spider-Man had used to ensnare him and his Brotherhood teammates with, "Not that I mind, 'cause Frederick J. Dukes loves to throw-down with the best of 'em."
The Blob then walked over across the street, first to where Avalanche was standing and proceeded to rip away the thinly-latticed strands that had been used to gag and bind the one-man seismic generator, before then going over to free Pyro as well. Meanwhile, Angelica had dropped her bookbag down onto the sidewalk before worriedly rushing over to Iceman's side, as he lay on the ground after being felled by the Brotherhood's combined efforts, and was just now beginning to regain consciousness.
"Wow. Spider-Man." Avalanche said in a very unimpressed toned, as the Blob now stood over by Pyro on the deserted street, "Don't get pissed or anything if I'm not all shook up over meetin' you, but I guess that's more my department anyways."
With those words, a just cut-loosed Avalanche unhesitatingly launched into another one of his seismic-charged attacks, this time aiming his energy blast directly at Spider-Man, who was clinging to a storefront wall close to them on the street. Upon impact, the store's wall immediately crumbled and most of its windows shattered under the sheer ferocity of Avalanche's vibratory discharge. Spider-Man easily dodged the blast by using his web shooter to swing over to a still standing lamp-post, which luckily had managed to survive Avalanche's earlier handiwork.
"So, as the adult in charge here, don't you think you should be teaching these two knuckleheads something about respecting private and public property?" Spider-Man now quipped about Pyro and Avalanche to the Blob, as he hung upside down and lowered himself closer to the street by a long, thick strand of his webbing from that nearby lamp-post on the street.
"Oh, I'm gonna teach 'em somethin' alright. I'm gonna teach 'em that to get rid of a major pest problem, you gotta squash the king bug!" The Blob replied, as he went over and used his freakish strength to pick up an overturned car on the street, which by now was empty of any bystanders, and hoisted the vehicle above his head before he sent it sailing through the air at Spider-Man.
"Now, that was just plain rude." Spider-Man humorously responded, as his own superhuman strength levels allowed him to somersault down from his hanging position on the lamp post and effortlessly catch the car in mid-air, before setting it back down onto the damaged street pavement.
"No, I'll show you rude, when I leave you burnt to the bone!" Pyro now chimed in, as he used the flamethrowers attached to each of his wrists to fire off a scorching attack of his own, and try to catch Spider-Man off-guard.
"Hate to break it to you 'Sparky', but appearances to the contrary, you're not the one who lights my fire." Spider-Man replied, as he agilely avoided the fire-blasts that had been aimed at him by jumping to his side, and then up onto the wall of an apartment building on the opposite side of the street.
In the same fluid motion, Spider-Man used his web-shooters to latch onto nearby fire-hydrant and forcefully turn it in a new direction. Spider-Man carefully aimed the valve, before he yanked the hydrant's plug off with his webbing. The resulting deluge that shot out drenched both Pyro and Avalanche in a fast-moving stream of water, knocking both of them to the ground as it washed them down the street and temporarily out of the fight. But, the Blob's mutant ability to root himself to whatever ground was directly underneath him made him virtually unmovable, and the jet-force of the water stream had essentially no effect on him.
"You'd better get out of here now, because I have a feeling that things're really about to get messy." Iceman groggily said to Angelica, as he had recovered just enough that he was now able to stand up. Iceman at once saw that Spider-Man had joined them and immediately realized that his observation was a bit of an understatement, as their situation appeared to have already escalated into full-fledged rumble status.
"No Way! I'm the reason all of this is happening, and I'm not going anywhere until I've helped you stop those guys." Angelica insistently replied, as she looked up at Bobby while tightly holding onto his arm, making sure that he didn't lose his balance and fall back down.
Angelica was one of the few people on Earth that, thanks to her own mutant abilities, could touch Bobby's ice-covered body with her bare hands and not be physically affected by its sub-zero effect. But, Angelica was actually having more trouble with the fact that John and Lance, two of the people that she had lived and gone to the same school with, were now helping to incite all of this chaos and destruction and something inside of her just wouldn't let her walk away from this scene.
"You sure you wanna do this?" Iceman now asked her, as the ice-covered teen stood and looked down into Angelica's captivating green eyes. He wanted Angelica to carefully consider what she was about to get into, given how far the Brotherhood had shown them that they were willing to go by already causing such a concentrated amount of damage to this city block.
"I've never been more sure about anything." Angelica smirked, as she gazed up into his icy features and confidently replied, "Plus, I've trained against Pyro and Avalanche in our Combat Room back at school, so I have a good idea how they'll think in a fight."
With that, Angelica's entire body began to glow as it became enveloped in a brightly-illuminated field of microwave energy. Firestar wanted to make it crystal clear to Bobby that she was serious, and that she was also very much able to back up her words with action.
"Okay, you take Avalanche, and I'll deal with Pyro." Iceman told Firestar, as they gazed at one another for a moment, before turning to head over to Pyro and Avalanche, who themselves were just now getting back up onto their feet after being washed-out by Spider-Man.
Meanwhile, after hosing down Pyro and Avalanche, Spider-Man had been left up the street with the Blob as his lone adversary.
"You know, normally I'd make some kinda crack about Jenny Craig and how she hasn't been returning any of your phone calls, but I thought that might still be a sore spot for you." Spider-Man verbally jabbed at the Blob, as he stood close by and got into a stance that readied him for whatever the Blob intended to throw at him next.
"Hah! That's a good one. But, the only sore spot around here is gonna be your neck, when I detach your bug-eyed face from it you wall-crawlin' sonuvabitch!" Blob smiled and genuinely laughed in response, as he went over and snapped up a sign-post from its concrete mooring right next to the street curb, "And since I don't have a giant rolled-up newspaper handy to squash you with, this'll just have to do."
This time, the Blob wanted to make sure that he had a weapon that was far more maneuverable than the much larger metal light-pole that he had previously, which he had picked up and had then dropped when Spider-Man initially arrived. But, instead of sitting and waiting to be the one on the receiving end of the Blob's next attack, Spider-Man decided to be the one to go on the offensive first.
Using his lightning-quick reflexes, Spider-Man ran and catapulted himself up into the air, using his web-shooters to latch onto a nearby apartment building. Swinging through the air right over the Blob, Spiderman then used his webbing to grab onto the fire escape over on the side of this brown-bricked building. He then circled back around in mid-air to deliver a powerful, double-footed jump kick maneuver against the Blob. Which, Spider-Man thought would be enough to take his over-sized foe off of his feet, before the Blob could get an opportunity to counter. But, being unaware of the specific details of how the Blob's mutant powers actually worked, Spider-Man instead found himself in a bad situation, as both of his feet were now left lodged in the nearly six and a half-foot tall Blob's bulbous upper-torso.
"Ummm, yeah. Hope you didn't take what I said earlier about, what I'm sure has to be a glandular-condition, personally." Spider-Man now amusingly said, as he was left in a semi-horizontal position with both of his legs entrenched in the side of the Blob's abdominal region.
"Nah, with me it's always business and never personal." Blob nodded his head and lightly chuckled with Spider-Man, as he still held the sign-post in one hand and raised his other enormous one above his head.
The next thing that Spider-Man felt was a thunderous shot from the Blob's right hand across his chest, as the larger man's surprisingly fast reflexes delivered a devastating backhand that slapped Spider-Man away from him. The red-and-blue clad hero shot through the air like a bullet and was sent clear back across the street, where his entire body slammed very harshly into the side of an apartment building. It was the same one that Spider-Man had just been swinging from, and as a result of the tremendous force that he flew into it with, part of the building's exterior wall collapsed down on top of him.
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At that same moment down the street, while Spider-Man was in the middle of sharing a very short communion with a very tall brick-wall…
"You're good, but you're way out of your league tryin' to hang with me Bobby." Pyro said, as he stood in the middle of the street and ignited volley, upon powerful volley, of incendiary blasts from his flame-thrower and directed them at Iceman.
"It looks like I'm doing just fine so far." Iceman mockingly replied, as he countered Pyro's attack by using his own remarkable mutant powers to project icy-cold blasts from his hands, neutralizing Pyro's fire-balls in mid-air as their elemental duel carried on.
"Yeah, but you can't keep that up forever. And, your stupid ice-sculptures won't do you any good when I decide to really get serious." Pyro sneered and remarked, as he stopped shooting fire-balls at Iceman, and instead ignited a large stream of flames from his mechanized throwers.
Pyro then used his pyro-kinetic abilities to reshape this steady source of fire into the shape of a fist, and with breath-taking effect, sent his fire-fist the entire distance of the street between him and Iceman. Manipulating fire with his pyro-kinetic powers gave whatever creations that Pyro could conjure up a certain degree of solid tangibility. Which Iceman was now given a personal demonstration of, as the fire-fist punched him with what felt like the force of a semi-truck, and not even the ice-wall that he had thrown up as a protective barrier was able to stop it.
"Well, I'll let you see for yourself just what one of my stupid ice-sculptures can do." Iceman thought to himself, as he struggled back up to his feet after being knocked down hard to the ground, and once again activated his powers.
While Pyro stood on the street with a smug expression and in a semi-victorious pose, Iceman used his ice powers to quickly create a large object of his own. Forming right in front of him was a large fist made completely out of ice, which Iceman then sent hurling through the air towards Pyro at an alarming velocity.
Pyro aptly ducked down and took cover on the street, barely dodging the huge ice-fist as it flew by overhead. And almost immediately Pyro began to formulate a new plan of attack, which he intended to use to bring this showdown with his old friend to a swift and brutal conclusion.
"Fine, you think you can hang with the big boys, then get ready to get your shit stuffed!" Pyro angrily said, as he stood back up from the pavement and faced Iceman from further up the street.
Suddenly, a tremendous amount of fire began to surge from Pyro's flamethrowers, as he slowly closed his eyes. With intense and heavy concentration, Pyro rapidly reshaped these flames into his deadliest creation, his Pyro-kinetic Firebird. And Iceman was well aware of just how dangerous this creature could be, as he had been on hand a few months ago to witness Pyro use it to decimate an entire squad of giant robotic Sentinels.
Iceman realized that what he needed was to give himself some time, and some breathing room, to try and figure out how best to deal with such a harrowing creature. So, Iceman jumped onto the ice-slide that he formed underneath him, and he briskly took off with Pyro's huge firebird in close pursuit right behind him.
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Elsewhere on the street, as Iceman slid up and down the block from high above in weaving and winding patterns to avoid the firebird, Firestar and Avalanche were in the midst of a confrontation that certainly wasn't lacking in drama of its own.
"You're just wastin' time, Frosty already said your ass is comin' back with us. One way or another, Wall-flower." Avalanche said to Firestar, as she used her mutant powers to levitate a few feet into the air above him and flew around in intertwining circles.
"I told you, I'm not going back with you." Firestar protested, as she continued to float overhead, "And I hate it when you call me that too!"
"Have it your way, Wall-flower." Avalanche laughed, as he continued to intentionally refer to Firestar by a nickname that he knew she despised, doing it if for no other reason than he seemed to take perverse pleasure in hurting Angelica's feelings, "All it means now is we get to lower the boom on you, your boyfriend, and on 'bug-brain' over there too."
Avalanche then launched into another one of his attacks, this time stomping his foot on the ground and angling the direction of his well-timed seismic surges to send numerous large chunks of the street's pavement exploding upwards at Firestar.
But, with the hours of training that she had received under the tutelage of Emma Frost in their Combat Room underneath the Massachusetts Academy, Firestar was more than capable of countering Avalanche's onslaught. Firestar easily destroyed each of the projectiles that Avalanche had directed at her, using the powerful microwave-energy beams that she fired out of her hands to accomplish the task.
"So, you wanna stay up there and play hard to get? Fine, you can hang around up there all night and watch me remodel this whole neighborhood!" Avalanche said with slight frustration in his tone, as Firestar continued to evade him by remaining aloft overhead.
"No, you won't!" Firestar replied, as she now came down from her aerial perch, and landed on the middle of the street in front of him.
Firestar could tell from the way that the area right around them was starting to shake and tremble violently, that Avalanche was gearing up to unleash a seismic tidal-wave of epic proportions, one that just might be powerful enough to wipe out the rest of this city block.
"Good goin' dumbass, you just did exactly what I wanted you to." Avalanche sneered and told Firestar, as she had unwittingly fallen for his ploy of threatening to destroy this neighborhood, and was now standing right in his line of fire.
Avalanche then discharged the seismic energy that he had been building up in his body, sending a ten-foot tall tidal-wave racing towards Firestar that swallowed up much of the remaining street pavement, a few cars, and most other items in its path.
Firestar's immediate, and really her only available response, was to brace herself and prepare to use her own formidable powers to attempt to block Avalanche's mutant tidal-wave phenomenon. As she began drawing a substantial amount of power from the Earth's electromagnetic field, Firestar's body started to burn almost incandescently like an earth-bound star. She then discharged that tremendous energy into a blast meant to halt Avalanche's tidal wave from devouring the rest of the block, and her along with it.
The result was a stand-off between the two, with both Avalanche and Firestar determined not to give an inch to the other. As they each increased the level of their power output, it seemed to be just a matter of time before one of them would be forced to cede in what had become an ultimate test of wills.
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In the midst of all this discord and further up the block from Avalanche and Firestar, the Blob had come across the street and now stood mere yards from the partially demolished wall of the apartment building in front of him. The Blob proudly made a visual inspection of the area, taking note of the section of the wall where he had hurled Spider-Man into, and where the web-slinging hero had left a noticeable hole where he made impact. But beyond just admiring his own destructive handiwork, the Blob now intended to finish Spider-Man off for good, as evidenced by the sign-post that he was still holding in his right hand.
"Whoo-wee! If you'd done your homework, then you woulda known nothin' moves me once I plant myself to the ground. And, you wouldn't've had to learn the hard way that nothin' moves the Blob." The Blob contemptuously remarked, as he continued his slow approach to the side of the apartment building, stopping right at the curb when he saw Spider-Man beginning to stir and pick himself up from beneath the brick rubble out of the busted exterior wall.
"Thanks for the heads up, even if it is…uhhh, after the fact." Spider-Man replied, as he stood up rubbing the back of his head, and shook himself free of the remaining structural debris on him. Then, as he looked over at the Blob, Spider-Man did something that was totally unexpected by Mr. Dukes.
"That whack upside your head musta really scrambled your brains, 'Bugsy', 'cause you ain't even touched me." The Blob said to Spiderman, as he began to shooting off a vast amount of webbing, except that it wasn't hitting the Blob directly. Instead, Spider-Man weaved the net-like material from his wrists into a webbed circle on the ground, which began to completely surround his over-sized foe.
"Yeah, I know. You must think I'm blind or somethin', what with me missin' a svelte chap like yourself." Spider-Man sarcastically replied, as he looked down at the street and continued his work unabated, quickly finishing his webbed enclosure around the Blob.
Then without warning, Spider-Man began ripping up chunks of the street, curb, and sidewalk with his webbing. Working at a furious pace, Spider-Man then shot more webbing onto the exposed foundation around the Blob, and continued to pull up even larger sections of the foundation around him. After less than a minute, it soon became apparent what Spider-Man had done, and his exhaustive laboring was about to pay off in spades.
"You gotta know it's gonna take a lot more than this nest-buildin' display of yours to…" The Blob muttered, as he stood on a small section of pavement left in the center of the man-made crater, which Spider-Man had keenly dug around him, "Wait…what inna hell!
While the Blob had been boasting about how Spider-Man's excavation work had done little to harm him directly, he had failed to catch on to the fact that there was much more going on there than met the eye. The Blob now began to feel a strange sensation of the ground beneath him starting to tremble, even though he could see that Avalanche was otherwise occupied with Firestar down the street and had nothing to do with these tremors that he was currently experiencing.
In that same moment, Spider-Man used his web-shooters to swing up to the side of another nearby building, just as the foundation around the Blob suddenly collapsed in. The bulbous mutant fell down into a giant sinkhole in the street, plummeting downward like a huge stone falling to the bottom of a well. His predicament was all thanks to Spider-Man's efforts, which had made the paved area around the Blob very unstable. This, coupled with the Blob's mutant ability to manipulate his body's mass and greatly intensify the gravitational forces underneath him to turn himself into a virtually immovable object, simply left this small section of the street unable to support the tremendous amount of stress being placed upon it.
With the Blob having been dropped into the subterranean regions that ran far below New York City, Spider-Man was now free to turn his full attention towards the remaining two members of the Brotherhood, who were currently facing off against Iceman and Firestar down the street from him. But, just as his battle with the Blob had ended in a quick and decisive manner, Iceman and Firestar's individual showdowns were also about to end just as swiftly, and as just as definitively.
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Yards down the street and at a level that was high above it, even from Spider-Man's vantage point on top of another building up the street, Iceman was sliding and crisscrossing his way up and back down the block, all in an attempt to stay one step ahead of Pyro's monstrous firebird. Then suddenly, Iceman jumped off of his ice-slide in mid-air and somersaulted down towards the ground, only to create a second ice-slide underneath him halfway down. It then whisked him away in a new direction heading up the street away from Pyro and his firebird and towards Spider-Man. But, Pyro's mental control over his flame creation was such that he had absolutely no trouble in commanding his firebird to halt and change its trajectory as well, as it managed to keep in close pursuance behind Iceman.
"Alright, this is it." Iceman silently said to himself, as he abruptly hopped off his second ice-slide and landed on the damaged street pavement below.
Having decided that it was time to end his elusory tactics, Iceman now stood in the middle of the street and watched as Pyro's firebird barreled down the street towards him. Iceman closed his eyes and began to focus his concentration, preparing to unleash the most powerful ice-blast that he could generate in his counter-attack to Pyro's tactics.
And it worked, as Iceman produced an immense, arctic–level discharge from his hands. The supercharged ice-blast hit Pyro's firebird, instantly and completely freezing the combusting gases that it had been created from. Crystallized in mid-flight the firebird was, ironically enough, turned into nothing more than a giant ice-sculpture, as it dropped down like deadweight to the street below with a resounding thud.
"And score one for the guy who makes the stupid ice-sculptures!" Iceman smiled and tauntingly said to Pyro from up the street, as he stood slightly bent over with his icy hands pressed against the front of his ice-covered thighs, and tried to recover as quickly as possible from the tremendous effort that he had used to stop the firebird. Iceman was anticipating that he wouldn't have long before Pyro struck again with another of his pyro-kinetic assaults.
"You got lucky, but you can't keep this pace up forever against me. I can tell just by lookin' at you how much of a strain that last blast took outta you, and now I'm bettin' that your powers'll give out way before mine do." Pyro replied, as he ignited his flamethrower again and this time set to the task of creating a second, and even more powerful firebird, to send against his former best-friend.
Meanwhile, down the street from Pyro and Iceman as their tragic duel was in the middle of a brief intermission, Firestar and Avalanche were still in the midst of their own super-powered altercation. Firestar was using her own extraordinary mutant powers to block the destructive tidal wave that Avalanche had unleashed upon her from up the street, temporarily preventing it from burying her and the rest of this city block in it.
"Just give it up, Wall-flower. You're not gonna win." Avalanche warningly said to her, as he steadily increased the intensity of his rolling tidal wave, which had grown even taller in the last few minutes.
"No, I'm not giving up. And I'm through being pushed around by people like you!" Firestar replied, as she became angry at hearing Avalanche once again derisively refer to her as 'Wall-flower'.
Firestar thought to herself about how people like Lance, and like Cassie back at her old high-school, seemed to enjoy making miserable the lives of others whom they deemed to be weaker than them, those whom they thought were unable to fight back against them and were thus deserving of such treatment. But, as she saw Avalanche struggling to maintain his footing against the now exponentially increasing ferocity of her microwave energy beams, Firestar now knew that she was neither weaker than him, and no longer was she unable to fight back. And it was a realization that she intended to demonstrate for Avalanche, right here and right now.
Like dynamite being set off, the inner rage that Firestar felt caused her energy blast to surge in strength, increasing it to the point that she easily obliterated the man-made tidal wave of debris that Avalanche had been aimed at her. The thunderous boom that resulted from Firestar shattering the rolling earth-mound sent powerful shockwaves out, which were strong enough to shatter the windows in most of the houses and cars left on the street, and also managed to knock Avalanche himself down to the ground. Having his seismic energy-waves redirected back at him caused Avalanche a significant amount of physical anguish, and he was also hit with a heavy dose of psionic feedback from it. As he sat on the battered street pavement, Avalanche placed his hands up by the temple regions of his helmet in a display of just how agonizing the pain that he was experiencing was.
But, Firestar's mega-powered blast would have an unintended consequence, as her energy beam was so strong and focused that, after demolishing Avalanche's destructive wave of rolling asphalt and debris, it continued on past him unabated. Iceman was facing in the direction from up the street where Firestar and Avalanche had been fighting, and was able to see her radiating beam speeding towards him. But, Pyro's concentration was erstwhile occupied as he worked on creating another one of his firebirds, and he never saw what hit him.
KRAK-BOOM!
Was the horrific and ear-splitting sound that resonated up and down the street and could also be heard a number of blocks over, as Firestar's powerful energy beam squarely struck Pyro's fuel-tank on his back and ruptured it. Her blast succinctly caused the canisters strapped to Pyro's back to explode with the force of a small bomb being set off, and it threw him a few yards up the street towards Iceman. While Pyro's ability to control all manner of flame was without question, the explosion caught him off-guard and he had just enough left time to throw up a partial pyro-kinetic field to protect himself from the fury of the flames, which were now raging around him.
As Pyro was propelled up into the air by the detonating fuel pack, he just as quickly crashed back down onto the street pavement with such force that it knocked him unconscious. The blast was so violent and concentrated that it even managed to burn through the flame resistant material of Pyro's reddish-orange leather uniform, which hadn't been designed to provide protection against a direct hit from one of Firestar's massive heat beams. Pyro's uniform then began to smolder a little, as the eruption severely burned portions of his back and shoulders.
Without hesitation, Iceman rushed over to use his ice powers to try and smother Pyro's bubbling suit. This was all in spite of the fact that minutes before Pyro had been attempting to kill Iceman with his own fire-manipulating abilities. Were the roles reversed, Iceman was fairly sure that Pyro would have most likely left him to die in such a situation, since they were now first and foremost adversaries. But, if the differences in the ways in which their mutant powers manifested themselves wasn't already a good indicator then this act of coming to the aid of a friend, former or not, further displayed that Iceman and Pyro were polar opposites of one another. Iceman now began to carefully shower Pyro's entire body in a thick sheet of sleet-like ice, which would put out his singed uniform without completely freezing Pyro to the bone.
At that same moment, Avalanche was just beginning to regain his bearings and had now recovered enough to see that Firestar was no longer focusing her attention on him laying on the ground in front of her, and was instead looking up the street past him with a gravely concerned expression on her face. While she had wanted to stop Avalanche's destructive assault from destroying all of the homes, businesses, and other property on the block, Firestar certainly hadn't intended to injure Pyro in such a sobering and crippling manner. But, since Avalanche had been out of it while all of this was going on, all he saw was Pyro now laid out unconscious on the street, with Iceman standing over him and seemingly using his ice powers to finish his teammate off.
Avalanche then stood up and took off running up the street, using his seismic powers to create an earthquake tidal wave strong enough to knock Iceman off of his feet as he came up behind him. Avalanche then knelt down to pick up a still unconscious and ice-covered Pyro, easily slinging his fallen teammate over his own strong and fairly rounded shoulders. Avalanche then turned to face Iceman, who was currently sitting down on the ground as a result of his earthquake, and was looking up at him.
"You might've got round one, but this shit ain't over yet. Not by a long shot!" Avalanche ominously shouted, as he looked down at Iceman and glared at him through the eyeholes of his chrome-hued helmet.
Avalanche then took a page from Iceman's own book and created a tidal wave of asphalt and earth underneath him and Pyro, which they rode over to the sinkhole that Spider-Man had a few minutes prior dropped the Blob into. As he used the rolling mound of earth to cushion his and Pyro's descent into the subway tunnel system, which ran underneath much of Manhattan, Avalanche further used his powers to cave in the sinkhole behind them and seal off their escape.
"Later, losers!" Was the last thing Iceman heard from Avalanche, before the hole closed in behind him and Pyro.
But given what had just transpired, it was obvious as to who the losers were, as Spider-Man, Iceman, and Firestar were the ones who had wound up besting the Brotherhood on this night.
"I'm so sorry, I didn't…I didn't mean to hurt John like that." Firestar somewhat frantically said, as she ran up the street and stopped next to Iceman, who was standing beside the now sealed in sinkhole.
"I know, and don't worry about it. The Brotherhood put you, put us all, in a bad position." Iceman told her, as he saw how visibly upset she was and came over to comfortingly put his ice-covered arm around Firestar.
"Hey, you two. If you think you can keep up, then follow me." Spider-Man said to Iceman and Firestar, as he had swung close by overhead, and was now hanging upside down from another undamaged lamppost on the street, just as the blaring sound of police sirens from down at the other end of the street could also be heard.
Even though the police were currently having trouble entering the area, which was all thanks to Avalanche having earlier used his powers to block off both ends of the street with a ton of pavement and other assorted debris, it wouldn't be too much longer before this battle area would be filled with police officers and other officials coming in to survey the damage. And, Spider-Man knew from personal experience that trying to explain to them that the hefty amount of destruction, which had been caused by the three of them fighting an escaped felon and two juvenile delinquents, would most likely fall on deaf ears.
Iceman proceeded to use his powers to create another ice-slide underneath him as he took off behind Spider-Man, who was swinging his way out of the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Firestar quickly ran over to grab her book-bag lying on the sidewalk in front of the burnt out pizzeria, before using her own powers to take flight. Firestar then easily caught up to the other two, as she flew high above the city with them. The microwave aura surrounding Firestar gave her the appearance of a shooting-star streaking across the nighttime sky.
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On top of another building, which wasn't too far from the battle zone that they had just exited, Spider-Man, Bobby Drake, and Angelica Jones now found themselves standing together near the edge of its roof-top. From here they didn't necessarily have the best vantage point to look out onto the city, but the trio was still treated with a pretty good view of the Empire State building along with a good section of New York City's well-lit skyline. It was the main reason why Spider-Man would often came here, as he sought out a few brief moments of solitude.
"So, you guys do this often? I mean, get into fights in public?" Spider-Man now playfully asked Angelica and Bobby, as he sat in a semi-crouching position on the roof's edge and looked out across the city.
"This was my first time." Angelica honestly replied, as she stood slightly behind Spider-Man to his left.
"Well, at least I try not to make a habit out of it." Bobby smirked and teasingly remarked, as he stood behind Spider-Man to his right.
Bobby had just de-iced himself to reveal the long-sleeved, turquoise check button-up shirt and dark-indigo jeans that he had on, and his fairly sarcastic remark caused the masked hero to turn back around and look at him, while remaining perched on the roof's edge.
"Smart move. Wish I could find a way to follow your lead, though." Spider-Man said, as he had detected, and actually enjoyed, the tinge of humor in Bobby's response.
"But when you fight, it's just because you're trying to help save people." Angelica now asserted, as she sat her book-bag down onto the rooftop, which she had been carrying draped across the shoulder of her violet-red blouse.
"What made you decide to come down and give us a hand anyways?" Bobby now asked Spider-Man.
"I just happened to be swinging by, when the human milk-shake down there set off my spider-sense and I decided to come see what was up." Spider-Man explained to them, referring to the tremors that Avalanche had caused with his mutant abilities.
"Your…what?" Angelica slowly articulated, as she had no idea what Spider-Man was talking about.
"Forget you heard that, that information's actually a trademarked super-spider-secret." Spider-Man jokingly said in response to Angelica's inquiry, "Let's just say I have a special way of telling the good guys apart from the bad guys. And I wasn't getting any of the bad vibes from you two that those three clowns down there were throwing off at me. Plus, I recognized 'Tubby' from his mug-shot that had been sent out when he escaped from prison, and we saw again when he caused that riot at Madison Square Garden."
Then Spider-Man turned his attention from Angelica over to Bobby.
"And, I remembered you from that photo of you giving Captain America a free lift on that homemade, frozen fun-park ride of yours, back when the two of you were in Washington D.C. a few months ago."
With that Bobby just looked at Spider-Man for a moment, after hearing him reference Iceman's happenchance appearance alongside Captain America. It was when the two were captured on camera together during their fight to stop the Sentinels' attempted takeover of the country, and it was an image that had wound up being broadcast around the world minutes afterwards.
"You saw that?" Bobby now asked Spider-Man, as he folded his arms over in front of him.
"Yeah, I do read the papers. And, it's not just to see pictures of myself either." Spider-Man quipped in response.
"Wow, I didn't think you really had time for that." Bobby once again whimsically remarked.
"And…why would you think that?" Spider-Man now questioned him.
"Well, I figured between you spending most of your time fighting crime, and then having to go hibernate back in your Spider-Lair, that you'd--" Bobby was saying to him, when he was quickly interrupted.
"Wait just one web-shooting minute, who said anything about me hibernating in my Spider-Lair, or me even having a Spider-Lair for that matter?" Spider-Man now wanted to know, as he stood straight up on the edge of the rooftop.
"They say that's why you disappear some times, that you have to go somewhere to recharge your spider-powers." Angelica now revealed, to a fairly amazed and shocked Spider-Man.
"Look, I disappear because I do have a life outside of being Spider-Man. Underneath this mask, I'm just your average, normal guy. Sort of." Spider-man told them, "Where're the two of you getting all this crazy info from anyways?"
"Um, actually I read alot of it on the internet." Angelica explained to Spider-Man.
"Figures." Spider-Man now sighed and shook his head, not so much in disbelief, as it was that he knew that he should've been expecting that answer from the get-go.
"So, then you don't really look like a mutated spider underneath that mask?" Bobby now asked, as he wanted to confirm another one of the online rumors that he had heard regarding Spider-Man.
"That would be a no." Spider-Man slowly laughed in response, as he crouched back down onto the roof's edge, "Remember. Average guy. Doesn't live in a Spider-Lair, but in a low-rent apartment with his girlfriend. Although if anyone saw it, I could see how they'd mistake it for some kind of a dungeon."
"Wow, you have a girlfriend? I guess it's good we don't work for the Daily Bugle or anything, because we might actually have the story of the century with that tid-bit." Angelica now cheerfully added, showing both Bobby and Spider-Man that she was capable of competing with them in the humor department.
"Trust me, I think its good you don't work there either. And it's got nothing to do with keeping my love-life a secret." Spider-Man said as he continued his banter with the two teens, "So, now that you know the scoop on me, what's your story? You two get bitten by a radioactive iceberg and meteor or somethin'?"
"We're mutants, actually." Angelica now informed him.
"Well, that explains that. At least it's not something weird, I guess." Spider-Man replied.
"Not any more weird than a grown man, who hangs off the sides of buildings in his red-and-blue undies." Bobby sharply remarked.
"Oooh, toouuucch-ey." Spider-Man commented, as he sensed a small amount of defensiveness in Bobby's last response to what he had intended as another one of his harmless puns, "But I didn't mean anything by that, especially since I'm the last person in the world who should be calling anyone else weird."
"It's alright." Bobby replied, as he began to smile again, "You know, the other kids at my school are gonna flip when they find out I met you."
"Why's that?" Spider-Man now inquired.
"Look at you. A mutant, out in public and doing good deeds and protecting people. We all kinda look up to you for it." Bobby explained.
"You're like an inspiration to the rest of us. A real hero." Angelica added.
"I don't know how to break it to you, but I'm not a mutant, at least not in the traditional sense." Spider-Man told them, "I got my powers by a freak accident."
"So did we, only our accident happened to be when we were born." Bobby smartly replied.
"But, I guess it is nice knowing that all of you think so highly of me, despite what the papers sometimes say about me." Spider-Man now stated.
"We don't listen to that kinda stuff anyways." Angelica now took a step forward and told Spider-Man, "If you listened to everything they said, then you'd think every mutant on Earth was planning to take over the world."
"We know what it's like to have people say things about you, just so they can further their own agendas. When what went down tonight hits the news tomorrow, they'll probably say it's just one more example of teenagers with raging hormones and super-powers running around out of control. And, it'll be the same folks that'll say it's why they need to pass that Mutant Registration Act." Bobby imagined.
Spider-Man was suddenly struck by the realization that he might actually have a lot more in common with Iceman and Firestar than he had previously thought, outside of the fact that they all had super-human abilities. And, Spider-Man now understood that they also had perhaps just as great of an understanding as him, of what it was like to have the public mistrust you just because of what you are, an issue that he had been coming to grips with ever since the day that Peter Parker's life was changed forever by a single bite from a radioactive spider.
"Well, I think it's about time I swung out of here." Spider-Man now said to Bobby and Angelica, as he stood up from his crouching position on the roof's edge and aimed one of his hands out towards another nearby building, "But, tell the kids at your school that if I ever get a Spider-Cave built, you'll be the first to know."
"Okay." Bobby smiled and responded, as he shook his head and laughed a little.
"It was really nice meeting you Spider-Man. And, thanks for helping us." Angelica said, just as Spider-Man was about to leap off of the roof.
"You guys can call me Spidey." Spider-Man responded, as he looked back at Angelica over his shoulder, before he swung away, "I only let my friends call me that."
"Guess we'll be seeing you around then, Spidey." Angelica happily responded, as Spider-Man shot his webbing onto the face of the building adjacent to the one that they were on.
And with that, he was gone.
Now left behind on the rooftop were Bobby and Angelica, having experienced a night that they wouldn't soon forget.
"Oh, I saw this lying on the ground and I brought it up with me." Angelica now said to Bobby, as she knelt down and picked up her book-bag.
Inside of Angelica's book-bag was the rose-colored windbreaker that she had been wearing, right before the fight with the Brotherhood started. She then pulled out Bobby's blue bomber jacket, which he had also taken off when their fight first began, and that Angelica had hastily bundled up inside of her large backpack before taking off to follow him and Spider-Man through the air up to this rooftop.
"Thanks." Bobby said, as Angelica stood back up and handed him his jacket.
"Not that you need it or anything. I mean, it's not like you're going to actually get cold out here." Angelica smiled and humorously commented.
"No, I guess I won't." Bobby replied.
Then, a moment of uncomfortable silence entered the picture, as Angelica and Bobby both stood looking at one another and began to think about the next obvious question facing them.
"So, you really are 'that Iceman' I saw on TV a few months ago?" Angelica now inquired as she broke the silence, which was a thought that hadn't occurred to her before, at least not until Spider-Man mentioned it first.
"Yep." Bobby replied, as he confirmed for her that he was indeed the same person that she, and much of the world, had seen when the Sentinels' took the President of the United States hostage.
Then, this brief verbal exchange was now followed by another moment of silence between them, as Angelica went over to sit down on a short concrete wall that surrounded the rooftop's ventilation and cooling unit.
"God, what am I going to do?" Angelica suddenly and unexpectedly blurted out, as she dropped her book-bag back down onto the rooftop, and looked down at the small pebble stones underneath her feet.
"What do you mean?" Bobby curiously asked her, as he came over and sat down right next to her on the concrete barrier.
"What I mean, is how am I going to explain all of this to my Dad? I can see it now, 'Um, Dad, you know Miss Frost, the lady who showed up out of the blue and gave me a scholarship to attend her school? Well, I found out that she's been using her mutant powers to try 'n brainwash me, and tonight I ran away from her school because I also found out the school's actually a training camp for mutant criminals. And, then I got into this huge fight in New York against some of my classmates, and we tore up most of an entire neighborhood. So I wanted you to know, just in case the cops came by asking you a few questions about it.'" Angelica looked over at Bobby and told him, "He's either going to think I'm lying, or completely nuts. Or, maybe even both."
"You can come back to Westchester with me, Professor Xavier'll know what we should do." Bobby now suggested to Angelica.
And given that her other viable options at the moment were limited at best, Angelica sat and thought about it for a moment, before nodding her head in acceptance. The pair then used their mutant powers to slip back down from the roof, this time quietly making their way back over to the same neighborhood where they had fought against the Brotherhood less than an hour ago. Luckily, since Bobby had been forced to park his car a couple of blocks from the pizzeria earlier in the evening, he and Angelica had little trouble in attempting to reach it.
Around the immediate area on the street where the car was, there were no cops in sight. All available units were currently pre-occupied with trying to figure out just what in the world had happened a few blocks up from where Bobby and Angelica currently were, as this usually calm and peaceful neighborhood now resembled a war-zone. In no time, Bobby and Angelica were inside of the red Dodge SRT4 that he had driven from his school into Manhattan. And they were just as quickly back on I-87 heading north, now on their way back to Westchester County, New York.
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On the ride back, Angelica and Bobby continued the conversation that they had begun earlier, which had been interrupted back at the pizzeria. They now talked further, with Angelica telling Bobby about the fact that she was from nearby New Jersey, and with him telling her a little bit about his life growing up outside of Boston. But more importantly, Bobby finally revealed to her that the reason she had been seen him on TV with Captain America. He now informed her that it was because he was in reality a member of the mutant super-hero group the X-Men, and Bobby explained to Angelica how their goals differed vastly from those of other mutant groups and individuals, like Magneto and the Brotherhood for instance.
After a nearly hour drive, their red sports coupe pulled into the automobile garage located on the campus of Xavier's School for the Gifted. By now, it was well past midnight and all of the other students at the school were either asleep, or at least up in their rooms. All with the exception of Jones, whom Professor Xavier had given certain allowances to stay up past curfew, given the nature of how his mutant powers didn't allow him to sleep for very long.
But, as soon as Bobby and Angelica entered the front door of the mansion, Bobby received a telepathic message from his Headmaster, which he had no doubt been expecting upon his return.
"Bobby, please come see me in my study immediately…" Professor Xavier mentally requested, as he always tried to maintain a constant, low-level telepathic resonance with his students, and was able to detect Bobby's presence as soon as he drove in through the huge iron gates at the front of the school.
"Just wait here. I need to go explain to the Professor where I've been, and what happened tonight. I'll be back in a second." Bobby hushingly told Angelica, as he continued on down the hallway to Professor Xavier's study, leaving Angelica in the corridor right outside of the living room where Jones was sitting and watching TV.
Upon entering his study Bobby saw Professor Xavier sitting behind his desk, dressed in one of his navy-colored herringbone suits with a blue and gray-striped tie. And, Bobby also noticed that Professor Xavier had his hands clasped together in front of him on top of the desk, as though he had been waiting in there for Bobby's return for some time now.
"You wanted to see me sir?" Bobby meekly asked, as he came into the study and pushed the door mostly closed behind him.
"Yes, I had actually expected to see you earlier when I returned. Preferably, watching the other students for me, as I had asked you." Professor Xavier admonishingly said to Bobby, although he was capable of doing it very calmly and effectively without having to even raise his voice.
"I'm sorry. It's just that something came up, an emergency that I had to go take care of." Bobby replied, as he went and sat down in one of the chairs right in front of the Professor's desk.
"And…what was so important that you had to leave the other students' unsupervised?" Professor Xavier further questioned him in an easy-going tone.
"It would be me."
Professor Xavier now looked up and Bobby turned around in his seat, as both men were greeted by the sight of Angelica standing just inside of the study's door.
"Don't be mad at Bobby, I'm the reason he left the school." Angelica tried to explain on Bobby's behalf, as she took a few steps further into the room.
Professor Xavier was very surprised to see Angelica here at his school, and was even more shocked that she had managed to enter the mansion without his low level psi-defenses alerting him to her presence. The Professor quickly realized that the psi-shields, which Emma Frost had obviously erected in the minds of her own students, were just as formidable as the ones that he had placed in his X-Men's.
"Miss Jones? You're quite some way from Snow Valley. Does Miss Frost know that you're here?" Professor Xavier asked her, as Angelica now stood right behind where Bobby was sitting.
"I don't care what she thinks, I'm never going back there! Especially, not after the way she turned the Brotherhood loose on us!" Angelica adamantly replied to the Professor, which brought a somewhat confused look to his face.
"We kinda got into a fight with Pyro, Avalanche, and the Blob in Manhattan, after Angelica refused to join them and left the Massachusetts Academy." Bobby explained to him.
"I see." Professor Xavier calmly replied, as he seemed to sit back a little in his wheelchair, before rolling it out from behind his desk and out to its side, "I think we can sort out all of the details in the morning. For now, I think that a full night's rest will do the both of you more good than anything. Bobby, would you please prepare the spare bed in Kitty's room for Angelica?"
"Sure." Bobby replied, as he stood up from his chair and turned back around to face Angelica.
As Bobby led Angelica out of the study with him, her backpack in tow with her, Professor Xavier sat in the same position next to his desk with his hands folded over in his lap. He then began to contemplatively think to himself, knowing full well what this confrontation with the Brotherhood tonight had ignited, and Professor Xavier dreaded the implications that it would hold for all involved on both sides.
Meanwhile, Bobby and Angelica were on their way back down the hallway, heading away from the study as they neared the other end of the mansion.
"Just wait right here, I'll be right back." Bobby told Angelica, as they stopped in the hallway in front of the student rec-room, "I'm just going to go grab some stuff from the laundry room, and then I'll show you up to Kitty's room."
"Okay." Angelica replied, as she turned and went into the rec-room, which seemed to remind her a little of the student recreation center back at the Massachusetts Academy, even if it was smaller.
Bobby continued on further down the hallway, cutting through kitchen until he was finally in the large laundry room on its other side. Gathering linen, blankets, and a pillow out of the linen storage area, Bobby took the items and then made his way back to the student rec-room. But, when he got back to the room, Bobby was met by a sight that he hadn't expected to find upon his return.
That of Angelica sitting in there, already fast asleep on the sofa in the rec-room.
But, one could hardly blame her, as Angelica had exerted a tremendous amount of energy when she flew the entire distance from Snow Valley to New York City, and had then physically pushed herself even further in their titanic showdown with the Brotherhood in Manhattan.
So instead of waking her, Bobby decided to go ahead and let Angelica continue to doze where she was. He first went over and took the backpack that was sitting beside Angelica, and placed it down on the floor next to the sofa. Then, he came back over and removed the white tennis shoes that Angelica had on, before placing her legs up onto the sofa in a proper sleeping position. Bobby then took the blanket that he had brought with him from the laundry room and spread it out over Angelica. Lastly, he carefully put a pillow underneath her resting head, gently re-positioning her long red hair and delicately pushing it aside from in front of her sleeping face in the process.
With Angelica now comfortably curled up on the sofa, Bobby then went over and took a seat in a living-room chair right next to her. He picked up the remote control to the TV in there and proceeded to surf the channels, curiously wanting to see if their fight had made any of the overnight news reports yet. But, as he flipped from one station to the next, Bobby didn't see anything talking about the disturbance.
Eventually a few hours later a report did come on, which only briefly mentioned a super-powered disturbance involving Spider-Man that evening in New York City.
But, Bobby didn't see it.
By the time it was finally broadcast on GNN, Bobby, like Angelica, had also fallen soundly asleep in the chair that he was seated in, and it was news that would simply have to wait until morning.
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Next Chapter: Meet the Parent…