Part 5: From the Ashes
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Most of the flight was spent in silence as each of the three passengers contemplated what might await them. When the Blackbird finally touched down near the shore of the lake, the broken dam visible in the distance, they disembarked quickly and scanned the shoreline.
"So what are we looking for?" Logan asked, taking a whiff of the air but picking up no human scents but their own.
"I don't know," Scott admitted. "Jean just said that she needed my help. She said it was dark."
"Could she still be underwater?"
"I'll take a look from above," Ororo said. A moment later her eyes became a glowing white as her mutant powers activated. Winds picked up and carried her away from the ground as she soared high above the lake. Within moments she was over a hundred meters in the air, able to see across the entire lake.
"See anything?" Scott's voice came over the transmitter in her uniform collar.
"Nothing so far. I'll make a few rounds."
Down below Scott walked to the edge of the lake, looking out across the vast expanse of water. What had he expected? That he'd just walk up and find Jean waiting for him? No, she had said that she needed his help. That she was in a dark place. Which had to mean underwater, right? But where? The lake was so vast.
Looking around, he tried to find the spot where Jean had been when the waters had hit her. The dam was over there, the water had rushed across the valley like so. Suppressing the emotions raging through him at the mere memory of that terrible day, he forced himself to analyse it clinically.
There, that had been the spot. More or less, at least. He remembered the jet hovering just over there after Jean had lifted it to safety. The water had hit her then and the tide would have carried her... that way.
Scott started jogging in the direction he had deducted. Logan, apparently guessing at his thoughts, made no comment and simply followed him. The two men made a brisk pace along the shore of the lake, no words exchanged between them. The forest grew denser in this direction, they wouldn't have been able to land the jet here anyway.
Making their way through the increasingly rough terrain, they finally reached a small spot of land that might have been a clearing once and now served as a miniature beach. The waters were quietly lapping across the ground. Slowing down to a mere trot, Scott re-evaluated his initial guess. Yes, the dam was right over there at the other end of the lake. This was the most likely spot a body hit by the waters would have been carried.
Looking around, he saw nothing but the water and the forest around him. No sound was in the air. No sign of Jean.
"Damn," he muttered. Where could she be?
"Do you hear that?" Logan asked, walking up beside him.
"Hear what?" he asked, distracted. "I can't hear anything."
"That's what I mean, bub."
Scott needed a moment to realize what the feral mutant meant. There were no sounds around them. No animals in the forest, no insects buzzing around, nothing. An eerie quiet had settled over the entire landscape. It felt decidedly unnatural.
"Scott? Logan? Where are you?" Ororo's voice came over the com, starting both men. They looked at each other with slight smiles on their faces.
"We're on the lake's edge, about a kilometre west from where we parked the jet," Logan told her. "Anything on your end?"
"I'm not sure. A moment ago I thought I saw something underneath the water surface, but when I looked it was gone."
"What was it?"
"I don't know, Scott. It looked like... like something big moving underwater. Some kind of... of bird-like shape. But it's gone now."
Scott looked around again, feeling the tension rising in the air. Something was moving, he could feel it. Logan seemed to sense it, too, his hackles were rising as his claws slowly unsheathed from his knuckles.
Something bumped against Scott's cheek. Starting, he looked around to find the offending object and froze in amazement as he saw a pebble. One that hovered in mid-air, spinning around like a zero-g dancer.
"Logan," he whispered.
"I see it."
The strange effect spread. Pebbles were rising from the ground around them, floating off in different directions. Leaves from the trees whipped around in random directions despite there being no wind at all. Ripples started moving across the water's surface in strange patterns.
"Scott? Logan? What's happening down there? Something screwy is going on with the winds up here."
"Can you see anything, Storm?"
"There is something in the water, about a hundred meters from where you are. The ripples are all going that way, forming some sort of... of shape. It looks like a giant bird or something."
Scott!
Almost stumbling, Scott looked around for the source of the voice he had just heard in his head. A voice so achingly familiar...
"Jean? Jean, where are you? I can hear you?"
"I heard nothing," Logan said, but looked around nonetheless. By now he knew that there were ways to communicate that did not depend on the spoken word.
"Jean? I'm here, Jean! Let me know where you are!"
"It's starting to glow," Ororo said, still observing from above. "I'm coming down."
"No, stay away," Logan yelled at her. "If this stuff is screwing up the winds you could fall and break your neck. Stay away and keep a lightning bolt handy, just in case!"
Ororo made a sound that conveyed her displeasure, but did as he said. Scott didn't even register their exchange, he was still looking around for any sign of the woman he loved. Out there on the water. The formerly flat surface was churning now, almost as if something huge was trying to get out from underneath.
Suddenly something grabbed his ruby-tinted glasses, wrenching them off his face. Instinct shaped by a lifetime of possessing a power he could not control made him squeeze his eyes shut. Without his glasses anything he looked at would be vaporised by his powers.
"Jean, is that you?" he yelled. "What are you doing? You know I can't control..."
Open your eyes, Scott!
"Tell Jeannie to cut it out, okay?" he heard Logan say. "This stopped being funny some time ago."
"Jean, my powers... if I open my eyes..."
Look at me, Scott! Look at me and free me!
It was the hardest thing he had ever done. It went against every training, every instinct, every fibre of his being. He opened his eyes, he destroyed something. He looked at someone, they died. His eyes were lethal weapons. He always had to wear those glasses or he would reduce the world around him to ashes.
But the woman he loved asked him to open his eyes and look at her. So he did.
Crimson blasts shot forth from his eyes and out across the lake in a terrible torrent of lethal energy. Before they could travel further than a hundred meters, though, the beams suddenly changed direction in mid-flight. They warped, curved, and hit the lake with terrifying force. Untold gallons of water vaporised in an instant.
Scott screamed as he felt the energy being ripped from his being. His powers worked by absorbing sunlight and storing it in his cells somehow. Now all that energy was being sucked down into the lake, something drinking it up with a ferocity and thirst that could drain the world.
At the edge of his awareness he heard Logan yell, heard Storm scream, but none of that mattered. All that mattered was the feeling of release as his powers reached heights they never had before, unleashing enough force to pulverize a sky scraper. And finally, after a seemingly endless amount of time, that usually never-ending well of energy inside him ran dry.
He dropped to his knees, exhausted, spent, his eyes no longer emitting their lethal rays despite the absence of his glasses. Logan was beside him in an instant and a moment later Ororo was also there, probably having set down some distance away to approach on foot.
"Scott? Scott, are you okay?"
He looked at them. Looked at other people with his own eyes and nothing between them for the first time since puberty and nothing happened. His eyes still sparked crimson, but there was no energy left inside him. Every last erg had been drunk up by... by what?
"I'm okay," he managed, struggling to his feet. "What...?"
All three X-Men turned to stare as a brilliant light rose from the depths of Alkali Lake. Crimson flames emerged from the waters in a towering inferno, unseen hands shaping them into an image of a giant bird of fire. It crackled with energy, power stolen from Scott's crimson gaze, and the lake parted like the Red Sea as the bird tore free of its watery grave.
And inside that giant image made of fire... a human shape.
"Jean?" Scott whispered.
A voice that was Jean's yet not hers answered inside his head.
I am Fire! I am Light! Now and forever, I am Phoenix!
End Part 5
