Written in response to Meredith's Power Exchange Challenge of March-April 2006.
Disclaimer: This is Fanfic. Technically, if I were making a profit from writing this, it wouldn't be Fanfic. Because then I'd be a writer for Marvel. As it is, they won't respond to my letters, so all standard disclaimers apply here.
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His tongue clamped firmly
between his teeth, his eyes squinted in concentration, his fingers
tightly gripping the needlenose pliers and screwdriver, the young man
worked diligently on the almost-completed device. Insofar as it
looked like anything else, it resembled a microwave with several
antennae; and every couple of minutes it beeped cheerfully as though
it was trying to converse with him.
Tightening the final screw,
Forge sighed and leaned back in his chair.
"I think it's
ready."
At the back of his workbench, a large piebald
hamster blinked curiously at him. Forge grinned back.
"Seriously.
I mean, this wasn't easy, it took ages to get the nanobots in
position. But I'm almost positive it's going to work. You'll
see."
The hamster's nose twitched.
"Einstein, you
could be a little more enthusiastic here."
Einstein scurried
over to his food bowl, stuffed half a raisin into his cheek pouch,
scurried back onto his wheel, and started running. Forge nodded
approvingly.
"That's more like it. Trust me, this is gonna
make things a whole lot easier around here."
Einstein may
have looked rather nonplussed to the untrained eye, but evidently
Forge was satisfied with his workroom assistant's response, and he
pushed a large button on the front of the device.
----
Lance
shut the fridge door, chewing on the last slice of leftover pizza
from the night before. Two pizzas had been delivered to their
doorstep, the delivery boy had said something about it going on the
Preese account, Pietro and Todd hadn't argued, and they'd had free
dinner. Everyone was happy.
Taking another bite from his cold
pizza, Lance raised an eyebrow. He didn't remember it tasting this
good last night, this... intense.
God, he loved breakfast.
Behind
him, Todd finished his coffee and grimaced. "Stuff's awful, yo.
We got anything else to eat?"
Lance shook his head. "We're
cleaned out for the day. I'm going shopping tonight."
"Man,
I'm starved..."
"So eat a bug. We got nothing
else."
"Yeah, yeah. C'mon, if I'm late f'r class again
I'm gonna get flunked."
"Alright. Let's go."
Tossing
his mug into the sink, Todd hopped to his feet - and promptly
overbalanced and fell flat on his backside, knocking his chair away
with a grunt. Applause came from the doorway.
"Smooth moves,
Toad," Tabitha called. "Gonna do some somersaults
next?"
Todd glowered at her. "Shut it. I slipped."
"Sure
you did."
Lance stepped toward the door. "Enough. If you
want a ride, I'm leaving now."
"We gotta ride with her,
yo?"
Tabitha winked at him. "Watch it, Froggy. I'll bomb
ya."
"An' I'll slime yo' ass to the roof."
Lance
shook his head and walked to the door.
Outside, Fred was
waiting patiently by the jeep; as Lance stepped outside, the massive
youth turned to look at him.
"Was wonderin' where you
were."
Unlocking the jeep, Lance slid in. "Didn't know
you were so eager to get to school, big guy."
"We're
late, aren't we?"
Alarmed, Lance looked at the clock. Then he
blinked. "No."
"...oh." Fred frowned. "But
you guys were takin' so long in there..."
"Didn't seem
any slower than usual to me, big guy. Maybe you're just energetic
today."
"C'n I have some 'o that, yo?" Todd opened
the passenger seat and climbed in shotgun, rather than leaping in as
he usually did. "I'm feelin' shredded this mornin'. Hungry as
hell an' no energy."
"If you're sick, you better not
infect the rest of us," Tabitha threatened. "I'll bomb you
into next century if you give me the 'flu."
"Cool it,
yo. I don't feel sick. Just... weird."
"If you say so,
Froggy."
"Are we gonna wait fer Pie?" Fred wanted
to know. Lance shook his head and gunned the engine.
"If he's
coming to school, he can run there faster than I can drive it. It's
his problem."
"Okay."
They drove away.
----
Ten minutes later, Pietro buckled his belt,
grabbed his backpack, and opened the door. A brief look of
concentration crossed his face, and he ran forward three or four
steps.
Then a half-dozen glowing balls materialised in the air
around him.
For a brief instant, utter astonishment appeared on
his face. Then it changed to fear. Turning, he tried to bolt back
into the house - and more of the glowing orbs appeared. He stepped on
one, tripped, fell flat on his face on the porch...
And was hurled
back through the still-open door by the explosion.
The door swung
neatly shut after him.
Two minutes later, the little old lady
across the street would open her door to see what the noise had been,
assume it had been a car backfiring, and go back into her house.
Five
minutes following this, the neighbors would wonder why smoke was
wafting down the street. They would conclude that someone had lit a
leaf-fire in the backyard, lodge a complaint with the local council,
and forget about it.
Some thirty minutes after that, Pietro would
wake up and wonder what had just happened. He would conclude that the
universe was conspiring against him, decide not to go out for the
rest of the day, and proceed to blow himself up another three times
within ten minutes.
But for now, the street was very silent, and Pietro lay upside-down against the wall in the den, dead to the world.
