2

Two weeks ago, as he sat outside nursing the tail end of an arm injury that prevented him from participating in the raging game of MutantBall he was watching, Bobby Drake had dreamed up what he hoped to be a perfect day in New York City for him and his new girlfriend Kitty Pryde. She had never been to the city, and he had only been once with his family several years before. It was a miracle that he was able to convince the adults to allow them to go (he suspected it was a way to make up for some of what happened during his promotion), and he wanted to make sure that he and Kitty had a day to remember. It certainly had turned out that way, though not through any planning on Bobby's part. After all, of the tourist spots he had come up with, traveling through the sewer system chasing after a giant Lizard along side a superhero currently perched on the ceiling was not on the list of must see activities. In fact, the idea had never even crossed his mind.

He was torn about this unexpected situation. On one hand, an adventure with a dangerous enemy waiting at the end of it beat sitting in a museum long after he had lost interest in the exhibits any day. He was doing what he liked best, being a hero, protecting the innocent, righting the wrongs and stopping the bad guys. Better than that, this was a genuine team-up, straight out of the comic books or his Saturday morning cartoons. The X-Men meet the Amazing Spider-Man.

On the other hand, his girlfriend was acting pretty weird around their masked partner, and he didn't like it at all. Bobby knew she had moments of being obsessed with Spider-Man, even when most news about the hero was rare outside of New York City. There was an Internet following of the hero she kept up with, and her computer's wallpaper was currently a photo a freelance photographer for the Daily Bugle had taken of the hero swinging through the city. It always seemed innocent enough, a left over of Kitty's teeny-bopper phase. And Bobby could hardly complain when his own wallpaper was one of Scarlett Johansson. Was this then just a case of awe at meeting her favorite celebrity, or more?

He really hoped he was just jumping at shadows.

They had stepped off the ladder into dim of the sewer, irregular patches of sunlight penetrating the darkness from manhole covers and the occasional grate. It was a long, straight tunnel that curved into an arch above their heads, with a carved out area about five yards wide at the bottom where a shallow pool of murky water sat. Raised walkways on either side of the gap were connected with the occasional metal walkway crisscrossing over the water below. The tube was broken only by turns to other tunnels and carved out niches where ladders led up to manholes, or where storm drains connected to dump water and garbage washed down from the streets above. It was relatively dry, though a sense of dampness seemed to hang in the air, among other things.

"Ugh, why can't I phase through smell?" Kitty said as she took her first real breath of the stale air.

"Not much worse than that first taxi," Bobby said.

"Wait, you took multiple taxis in New York?" Spidey asked, looking down at them.

"Yeah, so?"

"I'm impressed. You're braver than you look. And the sewers aren't too bad right now. I've been down here in the rainy season, this is absolutely pleasant, and relatively clean I might add," added Spidey, and he began to crawl briskly along the ceiling down the tunnel.

"Says the guy who doesn't have to walk through whatever this is on the ground," Bobby muttered, stepping around a pile of green slime that flowed down the walkway into the water below.

Smacking Bobby in the arm as she passed, Kitty walked around the slime and after the hero. She was trying to do her best to ignore her environment, which wasn't that hard when she focused on Spider-Man instead. "Should we try to be quiet or something, in case he tries to ambush us?"

Spidey had stopped at an intersection as was looking carefully at each tunnel before deciding on continuing down the one they were in. "Huh? Ambush? No, don't worry, I'll know if we're in trouble."

"How? Are you psychic?" Kitty asked.

"Hmm, maybe it could be some low grade form of telepathy, I don't really know. But anyways, I have this spider-sense that will let me know."

"Spider-sense? What's next, a can of Spider-Shark-Repellant?" Bobby quipped.

Spider-Man ignored that last bit. "It's like a danger sense. I get this feeling, like a brain freeze or all the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, and I know something's wrong. Usually I'm able to react in time."

"Usually?" Bobby asked.

"Sometimes I'm not fast enough and get punched in the face."

"Very reassuring," Bobby mumbled.

"What else can you do?" Kitty asked in awe. "And where did you get your powers if you aren't a mutant?"

"Well obviously I can stick to things. On top of that and the spider-sense, I've been able to figure out I have roughly the proportional strength, speed and agility of a spider. Keen fashion sense figures into that equation somewhere too, but the math is a bit tricky."

"What about that gooey stuff?"

"Webs," he said, shooting a string of web out of his right wrist. It hit the curve of the wall and spread out, forming a web like pattern as it stretched out.

"Yeah, you can make webs too?"

"Not quite," he said as he stopped his crawl along the ceiling and sent out another webline, this time to the top of sewer tunnel. Grabbing the line with his hands and feet, he lowered down to be eye level with Kitty, though hanging upside down. Keeping a grip by what looked to be only his feet pressed together with the line in between them, he took off one of his gloves to reveal his pale white hand with a metal device attached to his wrist with a angled beam extending to the center of his palm, a tiny red spot at the end of it.

"This is a web shooter. It uses a compound fluid derived from a prototype adhesive formula I found in some old notes of my dad. The stuff is strong enough to stick on Teflon and biodegrades in about an hour, so I'm not leaving it all over the city (like that rat Jameson keeps claiming I'm doing)," he added mostly to himself.

"Wait, you built this?" Kitty asked, holding his wrist and examining the device while behind her Bobby crossed his arms and glared at them.

"Uh, yeah," he said, the confidence he normally displayed while wearing the mask slipping a bit as the beautiful young girl examined his work.

"Adjustable threaded nozzle, rotating compression chambers, this triggering mechanism looks crazy complex," she said as she leaned in to take a closer look.

"Well, it has to be, I don't want it shooting off accidentally when making punching the bad guys or waving to my adoring public. It takes certain fingers tapping on the palm sensor here and the wrist in a certain position to fire."

Bobby hated to admit how impressed he was with the web shooting device the kid had made, it reminded him of something Forge might come up with, except whoever was under the mask actually made it work. But Kitty was way too close at this point. Wrapping an arm around her and looking over her shoulder, he glanced at the device. "That is pretty cool. But shouldn't we be more worried about finding the Lizard?"

"Yeah, you're right," Spidey said, pulling his web patterned glove back on. "He shouldn't be too far. He set up a lair around here when he first showed up, and he hasn't struck out new territory before. Just need to remember how to get there." He tugged on the web he was hanging from and flipped back up to the top of the tunnel

Kitty smiled as she turned and gave Bobby a quick kiss. "Admit it, you're having fun."

"Eh," he said with a wave of his hand.

"Whatever, this is so cool," she grinned wider, turning back to following their wall-crawling companion. "So you made your web shooters, but where did the rest of your powers come from?"

"I was at a demonstration at ESU, for some genetic work being done in a joint effort with Oscorp, and one of the test spiders got loose. It eventually ended up biting me on the hand. I was sick as hell the next few days, throwing up, passing out for most of the day; doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me and thought I was probably going to die. But then I woke up one morning feeling fine, went to school, and throughout the day started noticing how I had changed."

"So wait, you got bit by a spider and got super powers and became a superhero?" Bobby asked, skepticism clearly apparent on his face.

"Genetically altered, radioactive spider to be exact, and the getting to the superhero part is a little more complex than that, but yeah, that's pretty much the gist of it."

"That just doesn't seem physically possible," Bobby said.

"Hey, like I said, I probably should have died from the bite, I have no idea how it gave me powers, and neither does my only geneticist friend, Doctor Curt "The Lizard" Connors down here. Besides, you either turn into or are encased in hard, unmovable ice. How's that one possible Mr, 'I'm such a tough guy I walk around with my secret mutant codename on the front of my shirt'?"

"You're friends with the Lizard?" Kitty asked, interrupting Bobby's beginning of a comeback.

"Long story short, Doc Connors lost his arm when he was acting as a medic in one of those Third World countries that's always at war with itself. Couple of years later he tried to mix his DNA with lizard DNA as a way to regenerate human limbs, except something went wrong and now he goes all scaly and crazy sometimes. He's a good guy though, makes a mean sandwich and has helped me out of a bunch of jams. You know," he said as way of explanation, "when he's not eating people or stealing genetic altering devices"

"And he turns into a lizard monster thing," Bobby said, "and runs into some lair he made in the sewer?"

"Well, he does other things like steals stuff and tries to make other lizard people, probably why he has the Recombimator, it's faster than the formula stuff Connors used the first time. Don't know how Ock fit into it all, but we don't need to worry about him anymore.

"Anyways, we're almost there," Spidey said, turning left down the entrance to a side tunnel several feet above the main branch that had a small waterfall of muck pouring from it. "Ready for this?"

"Stop the bad guy, get the loot, I think we can handle it," Bobby said as he created an ice bridge up to the side tunnel. He took hold of Kitty's hand, projected a beam backwards to push them as they slid across and into the new path. It was wider than the others tunnels but lacked the twin brick walkways the previous tunnels had. Bobby put his free hand forward, extending the ice slide in front of them.

They had almost caught up to him when he suddenly turned. "Look out!" he yelled, just as a large shape erupted from the water and shattered the ice above it, just behind Kitty and Bobby. The two teens flew through the air and were about to crash into murky water below them when a large web sprang into existence below them. Landing on her back, Kitty could see Spidey crouched on the top of the tunnel with both hands outstretched and web shooting from both wrists.

The Lizard continued his leap upwards and slashed at the red and blue clad hero with both clawed hands, his toes spreading out and grasping onto the bricks above him. Ducking under the dagger-like talons, Spidey grabbed the Lizard's tail and used it as a swing to land on one of the curved walls of the tunnel. Pulling as he landed, he yanked the Lizard off the ceiling and tried to smash the beast into the wall underneath him. Though initially startled by the teen's action, the Lizard regained his balance and grabbed onto the wall with all four clawed appendages. "You will not ssstop me thisss time!" he roared as he landed, using the momentum generated by Spider-Man's pull to continue the movement of his tail forward, launching the web-slinger across the tunnel towards the opposite wall.

Spidey had just enough time to brace himself for impact with the wall when he found himself sliding downward. Iceman had created a slide from his perch in the web that sent Spidey sliding down and then upwards, launching him back at the Lizard. He twisted in the air to avoid the Lizard's tail that swung towards him and kicked him in the small of the back with an outstretched right foot, loosening the villain's grip on the wall and sending him splashing back into the water below. Pushing off the falling Lizard, Spidey reached up and returned to the top of the tunnel.

The Lizard resurfaced and found his foe scurrying above him towards the two still in the web. He thrust his head and chest forward, arms outstretched and let out a long, gurgling like hiss that echoed off the tunnel walls. "Doc, I didn't know you had such a lovely singing voice!" Spidey said as he sent a stream of webbing that clamped the muzzle of the Lizard shut. "But the acoustics of this place are all wrong for your range."

Bobby began freezing the water around the Lizard's waist when a churning noise behind him distracted him. He turned just in time to see a set of jaws rising from the water. Kitty let out a scream, grabbed Bobby's arm and phased them instinctively just as the jaws snapped shut, tearing through the webbing and effortlessly through Bobby's phased thigh. They fell through the webbing and into the water below. Wrapping his arm around Kitty's waist, Bobby projected a pillar of ice below him, lifting them several feet in the air as a second set of jaws tried to take a bite out of them. He could see the dark green ridges along a back and tail of the creature as it arched its body and slipped back under the surface.

"Spidey, alligators in the water!" Kitty called out as the ice tower shuddered. Below them, the first reptile had rammed its head into the base of Bobby's construct.

"Oh yeah!" the other teen said, dodging a swing of the Lizard's tail as the beast tried to free its webbed mouth. "Forgot to mention he can sometimes control other reptiles. Also, that looked like a crocodile, whoops!"

The Lizard shook his head one last time, the muscles along his snout flexing as he forced his mouth open, slowly tearing through the webbing. He let out another hissing roar directed at Spider-Man and once again lunged towards the masked hero.

"You could have told us that before you hung us over the water in a bait bag!" Bobby yelled. The second crocodile had surfaced and rammed the ice block. Bobby quickly turned around to face it and sent a blast of ice at the creature. It let out a roar as the ice shaped itself around its body and began to sink it, but Bobby watched in dismay as it rolled and thrashed in the water, cracking and shattering the ice as it hit the sides of the tunnel.

Bobby decided to change tactics. He turned his attention to the Lizard. The former scientist had grabbed Spider-Man by the ankle and threw him down into the water. Spidey quickly recovered and kicked at the knees of the figure above him, using them to push himself into a back flip and onto his feet. He didn't stay in one place for long, as he immediately jumped into a second flip, flying over one of the crocodiles that had rushed to attack his legs and landing on the side of Bobby's iceberg. He turned back to web the Lizard again when a beam of ice hit the scaled man in the chest.

Bobby, fully iced, looked down at the other man and gave a jerk of his thumb with one had, his other maintaining the beam that was slowly coating the Lizard. "Spidey, switch!"

With a nod Spidey snagged the crocodile coming up towards the X-Men with a web, swinging the creature into the wall with a wide arch. He quickly sent another pair of webs, this time pinning the creature to the wall as it snapped its jaws and tried to roll out of it. It was almost secure when his right web shooter, followed by his left gave a hissing noise of compressed air being let out of a can, and the web stream stopped.

"Not good!" he said frantically as the crocodile began to tear its way free. He lifted up his shirt, revealing a small utility belt, and began searching through the small pouches for extra web fluid cartridges. Pulling out a pair, he began reloading his web shooters, one eye on the animal struggling to free itself. "Johnny never has to fight stupid crocodiles in the sewer. He flies around in space and fights Doom and gets the girls and good press and if he ever does go into the sewer he can burn away the crap that gets stuck to his suit!"

He had just finished snapping the second cartridge in when his spider-sense flared. "Spider, look out!" he heard Kitty yell.

She dove off the ice tower and hit the stunned hero in a tackle, sending both of them crashing into the water as the untrapped crocodile lunged upwards out of the water, its short legs clawing at the ice to get at the man perched halfway up it. They pulled themselves out of the water in time to see shards of ice pelting the crocodile as it attempted to turn around for a second attempt.

Bobby kept up the assault, giving Spider-Man enough time to grab Kitty and return to the wall, higher up this time. Behind Bobby, the Lizard hammered with his fists at the ice partially encasing him, while the croc that Spidey had started to web was slipping back into the water.

Deciding, Bobby turned to Kitty. "Phase the two of you into a different tunnel, it's about to get cold in here!"

"Be careful," she said, wrapping her arms around Spidey's neck and phasing them.

"Hey what the—" Spider-Man got out before his head disappeared through the wall.

Directly on the other side of the bricks was another tunnel, similar to the one they had just left but it was completely dry. The two teens rephased and fell to the floor of this waterless tunnel. Kitty picked herself up off the ground and looked down at herself. "This is never coming out. Jean's going to be so pissed I ruined her boots.

Spidey stood and looked at the wall. "What is he going to do?" he said as he placed his hand on the bricks, as if to see if he would slip through it again.

He quickly pulled away with a sharp yelp. Frost began to creep through the cracks between the bricks and spread across the surface of the wall with tiny, crackling noises. Kitty watched them all turn icy white. "He's freezing the entire room."

"That might kill Doc Connors!" Spider-Man said in protest.

"He should be okay. He'll be knocked out and we can thaw him out and have him captured when he wakes up. By the way, you were so awesome in there!" she said, giving him a huge grin.

"Thanks," he said, rubbing his head. "I try, always nice to be appreciated for—"

She grabbed his arm and began phasing them back through the wall. "He's done, come on!"

The entire tunnel was caked in frost and icicles. The two crocodiles were half submerged in the frozen sludge, one's jaws nearly in reach of Bobby. The mutant was collapsed on one knee, his fist holding him up. He had reverted to human form and was breathing heavily, his hair and shirt soaked with sweat. "Bobby!" Kitty yelled and rushed over to him, dropping to the ground near him and sliding the rest of the way to him on her knees. She wrapped her arm over his shoulders, the other holding his head gently and lifting it to look at her.

He was smiling. "Wow, took more out of me then I thought. I'm fine babe, don't worry. Help me up."

She gave him a quick peck on the lips and draped one of his arms over her own shoulder and they stood slowly. "I'm good," he said, looking around at the frozen tunnel. With his free hand Bobby slicked his hair and smiled down at Kitty, kissing her on the forehead.

"Hate to burst your bubble kids, but where's Lizard?" Spidey asked.

"What are you talking about, he's right, oh crap," Bobby said, staring dumbfounded at the spot where the Lizard had been breaking out of the ice as Bobby had begun his personal artic storm. Where the reptile had been starting to frost stood a hollow stump of ice.

Behind them they heard a roar followed by the clanging of a metal being hit above them, echoing off the walls of the sewer. "He's heading back to the surface!" Kitty called, pointing towards a stream of sunlight pouring in from around the corner of this tunnel.

"At least we'll be out of the sewers," Bobby said, stumbling a bit but picking up speed as adrenaline took over to replace the weakness he had felt. Spider-Man was ahead of them, shooting a web up the opened manhole to a nearby building and zipping himself out of the sewers. The two mutants followed, the slower than the spider-bitten teen, reaching just after he disappeared over the edge.

"I'll ice us out, it'll seal this up behind us so he can't escape back this way," Bobby said as they stood under the hole. He wrapped his arm around Kitty's waist.

She kissed him quickly on the lips. "For luck," she said with a grin.

"Nerd," he grinned back. Pointing his other hand downward, he created a block of ice beneath them that continued to grow, lifting the two of them rapidly out of the sewer. The ice continued to rise a bit as they cleared the lip, cracking the concrete around the hole a bit.

"Oops," Bobby said, glancing down at his handiwork.

"Smooth," Kitty said.

They looked around to find themselves in a rundown alley. Graffiti covered the walls, and there was trash piled up around a pair of overflowing, rusting dumpsters. The buildings themselves were old, with ancient looking fire escapes and dirty looking windows.

At the far end, near the alleyway's opening was Spider-Man, launching a high jump attack against the Lizard, who dodged towards the mutants. Seeing Iceman, he hissed and charged at him. Bobby reacted by sending a shower of ice shards at him, but the Lizard leapt onto the wall of the nearby building without losing any speed. The ice continued down the alley, some smashing into fire escapes or the dumpsters, but a good number of them almost hit Spider-Man, who bent backwards to dodge under the ice barrage. The ice crashed into the cars out on the street, breaking windshields and some making it as far as the shop windows on the other side of the street.

"Man, the Professor's going to kill me for that one," Bobby said glumly, unafraid of the Lizard who slashed at him since he already had felt Kitty phasing their molecules.

The Lizard passed through them, landing hard on the ground behind him. Skidding to a stop, he scrambled onto all fours and snarled at them. "You can't ssstop me if you ssstay like that!"

He stood upright to leap again when a blur hit him in the side of the head, sending him reeling to the side. A red baton like object landed on the ground with a clang, followed by a figure jumping down out of the shadows of the building and scooping it up. The man kicked the Lizard completely off balanced with a strong side kick to the ribs. The Lizard fell, hitting the wall of one of the buildings.

The figure turned and they could see it was a tall man in dark red, horns sprouting from his forehead. He looked directly at Spider-Man, who had joined Kitty and Bobby. The devil spoke, his voice strong but cold.

"I told you before to keep your battles out of Hell's Kitchen."