5
The bright blue beam that shot from the end of the machine hit Bobby square in the chest, lifting the mutant off of his feet and sending him into the boxes stacked behind him. He disappeared in an avalanche of ripped cardboard and Christmas decorations as the other three teens stood too stunned at the power in the shot to do anything other than stare at the now chaotic box pile with looks of shock and horror.
"Oops?" Peter croaked out.
That tiny break in the silence spurred Kitty into action, the others quickly following behind her as she rushed the boxes. Grabbing tangled strings of lights and garland, she threw them aside. MJ and Peter were moving to help when Bobby sat up, a plastic candy cane hanging from his ear and a fresh burn mark on his tattered t-shirt. He rocked forward onto his hands and knees, crawling out of the pile completely, breathing heavily.
"Bobby, it worked, you arm is normal!" Kitty cried in happiness. "Peter you're a genius!"
"Are you okay?" MJ asked as he started to cough.
"Trash can," he managed to get out between coughs, a tiny nod towards a plastic bin on the ground near the edge of the desk. MJ immediately grabbed it and tossed it to Peter, who slammed it down in front of Bobby just in time for him to puke next to the waiting container.
They all tried to look away as he continued to vomit, but even when they did the sounds still reached their ears. Finally he stopped, rolling over onto his side slightly away from what was left of his lunch, and let out a long groan.
Kitty picked up a handful of leftover fast food napkins from the coffee table and knelt down next to Bobby, wiping his mouth for him. "How do you feel?"
He weakly opened one eye to look at her. "Like I puked out my liver. Is it in the trash can?"
"You missed the trash can, honey."
"Oh. Is it on the floor?"
"No, I think it's still in you."
"All right then." Bobby closed his eye again, letting out a long sigh. He laid there for a few minutes breathing slowly before he brought his hand up to his face, rubbing his eyes and forehead. He started to stand, and with Peter and Kitty's help he managed to get back onto the couch. MJ handed him a bottle of water from the refrigerator and he took a few small sips. Seeing his right arm for the first time since the blast, he held it in front of him and moved his fingers tentatively. "So it worked?"
"You're not ice any more," Peter said, "but we don't really know if anything happened to your powers."
Bobby closed his eyes and let the temperature of his hand drop, willing the cells to shift from normal, living tissue to the crystalline ice form his mutant powers allowed him to change into. The reaction in his hand was immediate. There was a crackling sound; his hand felt as if it had suddenly gone numb, and everything around it became harder to feel. Opening his eyes he saw his hand in its light blue, almost fully opaque, but not quite, state. Now for the true test, he thought. Reversing the process, he released a relieved sigh as his hand returned to flesh and bone.
"It's good to be normal. Well, you know," Bobby said with a shrug. He turned his eyes onto Peter. "I guess I owe you one."
"Don't worry about it," Peter said with a dismissing wave of his hand. "You got messed up fighting my villains and plus Kitty helped."
"Either way, thanks."
Kitty, who had been sitting on Bobby's left and hanging off his arm, leaned up and gave him a peck on his cheek. "I'm just happy you're okay."
"Me too, me too." He caught her lips with his own for a second, but broke it to talk to Peter again. "So how do we stop Lizard?"
"Aren't we in enough trouble? We've already missed the train, and I'm sure Peter can handle this," Kitty said.
"No such thing as enough trouble," Bobby said with an almost evil smirk. "Besides, even if Peter could take the Lizard himself, when the Recombinator's involved its best if he has someone watching his back."
"Okay, you can explain to the Professor why after trusting us to behave and keep a low profile we're going out for the second time today chasing bad guys."
"Whoa, who said we're going out again?" Peter said.
"You're just going to let Doc Connors stay like that?" Bobby asked.
"Of course not, but we still need to recalibrate it to human DNA, and then we need to find him."
"One thing at a time I suppose, let's recalibrate," Kitty said. She gave Bobby another kiss before standing and joining Peter by the workbenches. Peter had laid the Recombinator back onto the table, the genetic scanner's panel open and ready for a new sample.
"MJ, I'll need one of your hairs," Peter said. He was distracted by something he noticed on focusing lens.
The redhead's eyebrows closed in on her nose. "Why me?"
Peter didn't answer right away. He had moved the magnifying glass mounted on the desk and was examining the front of the device, using a small flashlight to examine deep the dark nozzle. He finally glanced up at his onetime girlfriend. "Mutant DNA and, well, whatever mine is probably won't change Connors back. In fact, who knows what might happen to him. But some normal human DNA should revert any changes the Lizard DNA made to his baseline structure."
"How did he change back and forth to begin with?" Kitty said.
She handed Peter a string of MJ's long hair and he placed it in the scanning receptacle. With the press of a button the machine gave a beep and began its analysis. He turned back to the others and continued talking. "He used some sort of serum the first time; he hoped it would just boost the regenerative properties of his lost arm, but it took over and changed him. He uses a chemical antidote solution to keep it in check, but it's always been a little flakey. This should do a better job, if it will still work."
"Still works?"
Peter let out a sigh and rubbed the back of his neck. "It looks like between all the times it's been used today and all the abuse it's taken in the fights, the lens is damaged. It should still work, but it could fracture at some point if it's used too much more. I'm sure the university would do regular maintenance after each use, but I don't have the parts or any idea how to fix it if I did here."
"What happens if it had broken when using it on me?" Bobby said.
"Let's not worry about that, I checked it before that and it was fine then. It probably just would have overloaded and shut down. Or exploded. Anyways, we have another shot, maybe two before it craps out on us completely." The machine gave another beep as a green light began to flash on the small screen. Peter quickly read the message before snapping the metal casing closed. "Okay, locked and loaded. Now we just need to find him."
"Well, where else would he go? I don't think he would go back to the sewers, or at least that one," Kitty said.
"He might go back to his house, he has Connors's memories. Or he might try to find a lab somewhere and cook up some new way to make a lizard army. Or he might disappear for a while and lick his wounds, I really don't know."
"Looks like I'm on recon duty," MJ said. She took a portable radio off the table, planting a headphone bud in her ear as she turned on a beat up television in the corner. She sat in an old armchair and began slowly flipping through the network channels as well as a few of the cable news networks.
"Recon?" Kitty asked her.
"Yeah," MJ answered over her shoulder. "You'd be surprised how fast the local news interrupts when some crazy goes on a rampage. Though usually if it's a known villain they just flash one of those tickers down on the bottom. You know, 'Stay away from Wall Street, Rhino smashing cars, yadda yadda yadda.'"
"That can't be good for us mutants to have these nuts running around like that," Bobby said. He and Kitty shared a dower look.
"Most of the time some pro-mutant scientist will let everyone know who wasn't a mutant, but I don't imagine people care too much," Peter said from the doorway. They hadn't noticed him slip off, and now he walked back into the room with a clean costume on, his mask held loosely in his hand. "How long do you two plan on waiting for Lizard to show? I can't imagine it will be much longer before you're supposed to be back in Bayville."
"Yeah, you're right, we'll probably have to call soon for a ride."
"Aww, poor Bobby," Kitty said with a pat on his head. "We'll have another adventure some other time. Don't forget, Doctor Octopus made you a sworn enemy."
"Got him!" MJ yelled out, pointing at the TV screen. Sure enough, there was footage of the Lizard shot from a news team on the roof of a low building. He was ducking behind cars as a line of police fired at him. They watched as he began flinging chunks of concrete and brick that littered the street.
"Where is he?" Peter asked.
"Scene of the crime, he went back to ESU."
"I can't web us all there."
"I can get us there fast," Bobby said, "but there'll be an ice trail right to your front door."
"Too much traffic for the van," MJ said.
"Great, so we can stop this fight but we can't get there," said Kitty.
"Look, let's just get far enough away from here, and then I can ice us there."
"I'll get the van, and I'll drop you off by the bridge," MJ said, running out up the basement stairs before anyone could say anything.
Laying his mask on the table, Peter snapped his web launchers into place and carefully attached several webs to the Recombinator, slinging it across his back once more. "We should try and make this as quick as possible, but I don't want the police to get their hands of Doc Connors. So let's try and lure him far enough away for us to change him back where people can't see. Then we can sneak him away."
"You think it's smart to just let him go like that?" Kitty asked.
"I'll go see him tomorrow and make sure everything's okay. The Lizard is like his Mr. Hyde, he probably won't even remember any of this."
"You're call," she said with a frown.
"She's back," Bobby called from the top of the stairs where he had been keeping watch. "Coast is clear."
The three teens made a dash for the open van door, slamming the door shut as MJ raced the car down the street. Kitty and Peter felt relieved there were few cars on the street at the moment in the neighborhood, since MJ was driving a few notches above reckless, but Bobby was soaking it up as he moved into the passenger seat to enjoy the ride.
They pulled to a stop at the base of the Queensboro Bridge and piled out. Peter stayed for a moment to give Mary Jane a smile. "Thanks MJ, I owe you another one."
"Just get him, Tiger," she said with a smile of her own. He pulled on his mask, jumped out of the van and closed the door behind him. Once again the redhead sped off.
Bobby ran his eyes along the length of the bridge as MJ drove away. Rubbing his hands together in anticipation, he mapped out his path. Cracking his knuckles, he closed his eyes and centered himself. The distance combined with the speed would make this a difficult run to begin with, but the way he planned to attach to the bridge would make it worse. He needed to remain as focused as possible on this first leg of the journey. "Ready?" he asked.
"Let's do it," Kitty said, wrapping her hands around Bobby's. "Grab on," she waved an elbow at Peter. He linked his own arm through hers, and he felt just the slightest hint of his spider-sense as the trio was lifted off the ground by a slide of ice forming below them.
With his free hand outstretched, Bobby froze the moisture in the air around him, with the ice forming behind him to push their section forward while making support structures in front of them. The supports first reached down to the ground, and then he made them connecting to the side of the bridge to the left of them. This was the hardest part, as he had to make extra support for the bridge since it wouldn't be held up by pillars underneath them. Once their path was parallel to the bridge Bobby picked up the speed, dropping the temperature in front of them faster and sending them hurtling across the East River, Roosevelt Island, and back across the water. They reached the other side and began plowing across rooftops and twisted down the streets with the occasional direction from Peter.
As they soared across Central Park, Kitty turned back to Spidey. "You shouldn't have dumped her!" she said over the wind.
"Do we need to talk about this now?" he said, his body shaking slightly. While he had no problem with heights and regularly performed flips in the air as he freefell from the top of skyscrapers, being shot through the city at these speeds of a block of ice outside of his control was making him a little nervous. Kitty on the other hand seemed to be taking it in stride, and he knew the Iceman was grinning.
"I'm just saying, you're crazy for each other and she's never going to be out of danger, so why use that as an excuse?"
"Again, let's talk about this later."
They began to slow down and at last Bobby deposited them on the roof of the very building they had first sat on together earlier that day. Peering over the edge they could see the Lizard was still throwing pieces of the destroyed museum at the police, who had given up shooting at the monster and were waiting for backup. Down at the end of the street they could see a SWAT truck forced to stop due to the heavy traffic on the damaged street. The teams were swarming out, grabbing gear and preparing to move down the rows of abandoned cars.
"They're going to shred him apart if they get to him," Bobby said.
"Or gas him and lock him up somewhere," Kitty added.
Peter checked the webbing on the Recombinator and gave one last glance over the side. "All right, I'm going to get his attention and then we'll try to lead him back to the park. It's open enough for a fight and we can use the trees for cover when we get him human again. You guys get ready in case he decides I'm not interesting enough to follow." Seeing the other two's nods, he crawled over the edge, scurrying down the front of the building until he was a few stories from the ground. "Hey Scalehead! Did anyone ever tell you that tail makes you look fat?"
Spider-sense flaring, he did a back flip up the side of the building, avoiding the thrown shard of windshield that smashed into the wall where his head had been at the same time the roar of "Spider!" reached his ears.
"First off, it's Spider-Man. With a hyphen. If I wanted to be just Spider, or just Man I suppose, I would have said that. Second, never mind, you're already after me!"
The Lizard locked his eyes on the Recombinator on Spidey's back, his yellow eyes contracting in anger. He let out a guttural hiss, his scaled lips curling back to reveal the rows of razor sharp teeth, as he leapt over the cars strewn about the street. He vaulted off a small sedan, jabbing his clawed fingers into the front façade of the building and scaling his way to the costumed hero. Spidey quickly snapped a webline to the top of the wall, using the elasticity of the webbing to vault himself back to the roof.
"Go!" he waved to Kitty and Bobby.
Iceman didn't wait. With Kitty hanging onto his arm he jumped forward back onto the ice bridge he had already created, his powers adding another layer to the frozen structure to keep them moving forward without the need to make new supports, just reinforce the old ones. To his right he could see the sun beginning to set on the horizon, and he couldn't help but think this could have been a wonderfully romantic way to end his date today, if he didn't have a four hundred pound lizard chasing after them.
Spidey had sprinted to the far end of the roof and threw himself into a swan dive. He fired a web from his right hand at the farthest point of his arch, snagging the edge of a nearby building and swinging himself forward. He sent a second line with his left hand as the Lizard leapt from the rooftop. His gait was awkward to look at, as sometimes he ran on all fours and sometimes just the back two. But despite looks, the monster was fast. Bobby saw this and realized the Lizard was still following Spider-Man, or more likely, the Neogenic device strapped to his back.
Bobby leaned to his left, forming an offshoot to the original slide. He took this new path and double backed towards the Lizard. "Grab onto my waist, I need my hand," Bobby called back to Kitty.
"What do you think you're doing?" she yelled into his ear as she wrapped both of her arms around her waste.
Bobby ignored her. His left hand still focusing his power on the slide, he shot them around the Lizard, blasting him in the face with rain of ice shards before spinning back towards the original slide.
"Great," Kitty said looking behind him, "he's following us now."
"Good, we're faster than Pete."
"Didn't know you cared." He could hear the half smile in her voice. He ignored that too.
Just on the edges of his peripheral vision he could see the Lizard sprinting along the roof tops to their left. Bobby was suddenly caught off guard as the green man jumped from over fifteen feet away directly at them. Bobby stopped the flow of ice through the bridge just as Kitty phased the two of them. The Lizard passed right in front of them, his talons swiping through Bobby's intangible head. He landed on the opposite roof on all fours, his body whipping around as he prepared for another leap. Kitty unphased them as Bobby hit the proverbial gas with his powers, pushing them back onto the original slide and rocketing them towards Central Park.
The Lizard was quick to follow, springing onto the ice left in their wake. He slipped once, but regained his balance by digging his claws into the bridge. Using his claws, he rushed after the mutants.
"He's gaining on us, I can't believe how fast he's moving," Kitty said. She turned back to Bobby. "Can you get us moving faster?"
"Much more than this and I don't know if I'll be able to reinforce the supports in time," he answered. Sweat had rolled down his brow and frozen as he concentrated. He shook his head, knocking a few loose.
"How far away can you set the push point?" Kitty asked. She knew she couldn't just phase them to stop Lizard's attacks, because Bobby wouldn't be able to generate tangible ice to propel them with.
"Six, seven feet maybe? Not a lot and we're going to lose speed because of it."
"That's fine, he'll be on top of us in a second anyways. Just tell me when we're over the park."
Kitty let go of Bobby and walked carefully a few feet away from him. She could see the line in the ice where the new pieces of the slide were created. It would have been fascinating to study sometime, but not now. The Lizard was thrashing down the slide towards her on all fours, each claw ripping out chips of ice so fast that they made it look like he was riding a cloud of ice particles. She didn't have much time to think of a plan to stop him from reaching Bobby while keeping him in the chase.
Her thinking time was cut back to nothing as the Lizard pounced, clearing the last bit of distance between them. Stepping back to allow him to at least get footing on the moving block, she phased through his snapping jaws and reaching hands, countering with a quick chop to the throat from underneath while she threw her leg between his and delivered a hooking axe kick to the back of his left knee, forcing him to drop forward. She closed the gap and dropped her left elbow down onto the back of his lowered head.
The Lizard managed to grab the moving ice with one hand to keep him from accidentally falling as Kitty's blows forced his momentum to continue forward. He stopped himself from face planting and with a shove he thrust his shoulder into Kitty's stomach. Having learned her lesson from many private sparring sessions with the metal-boned Wolverine, she let her body relax and shift slightly to avoid getting the wind knocked out of her. Even without that injury, she was still knocked badly off balance, her feet slipping out from under her as she fell backwards. Seeing his opening, he prepared to pounce on her again when she disappeared through the ice.
Seeing her gone, he moved to take his shot at the one who had sprayed the sharp ice at him when he was hit in his own stomach by Kitty. She had phased through most of the slide, letting her hands grip the top as she swung like a gymnast, planting both her feet into his exposed abdomen. She let herself follow through enough to lift him just slightly off his feet before letting her feet rephase and pass through him. They both fell down onto the ice, the Lizard laid out winded on his front while Kitty let herself phase back through and pulled herself back up with her hands and power.
Kitty let herself breathe for a moment, letting the Lizard's weak attempt to grab her leg phase through her. She braced herself, as it didn't take long for him to shake his head, give one last wheezing breath and then begin to stand. Luckily for her, Bobby had begun to angle their travel downwards as he called out, "We're here!"
"Finally!" Kitty said. She phased through the next attack from the Lizard, letting her body slip down through the ice, the frozen block continuing carrying on without her. She passed through the leg of the Lizard, and at the last moment grabbed the end of his tail, phasing him and dragging him down with her. It was a twenty foot drop from the height Bobby had moved the slide to. Kitty let go of the tail, rephasing the Lizard and slamming him into the ground as Kitty made a graceful dive into the grassy clearing. She arched her back after she submerged, slowing her momentum and bringing her body's path back towards the surface like she might have if she jumped into a pool from a high dive. She reemerged about ten feet from where she had entered the ground, just in time to see Peter in a kneeling crouch nearby, the Neogenic Recombinator held against his shoulder like a rifle.
"Sorry if this hurts Doc, hope you don't puke up anything important," Spidey said as he pushed the activation button.
Kitty watched in dismay as the Lizard scrambled out of the way of the blue beam that shot from the cannon. Peter tried to follow him, the beam cutting a swath in the ground where he once stood, sending dirt flying into the air. But the Lizard ducked behind a large protrusion of rocks, and when the ray hit the stone the device gave a high pitched whir and shut off.
"It's at times like this that I hate science," Spider-Man said, his spider-sense buzzing madly as Kitty dove towards him. Too scared that phasing might further damage the already fragile Recombinator, she settled for tackling the masked man as the Lizard launched himself from the rock outcropping. They rolled on the ground, sending the Recombinator spinning away from them, landing with a small bounce on the spongy grass out of their reach.
The Lizard rolled himself when he missed the teens, tucking into a somersault and popping back up on his feet. He snarled at Kitty and Peter, ready to strike again when he saw the Recombinator out of the corner of his eyes. He gave a gurgling, hissing laugh. "I told you it would be mine again!" he said, sprinting towards it.
"I don't think so!" rang out two voices. Spidey shot two weblines from underneath Kitty, each connecting with one of the Lizard's ankles and pulled, sending him back down on the ground while Iceman, in full ice form, sped by on a slide, snagging the Recombinator by the still attached web strap that Peter had made earlier.
With a swipe of his claws the Lizard sliced through the webs. He climbed back to his feet, his eyes tracking Bobby a moment before he brought his fists slamming down onto the ice trail. It shattered under the impact, cracking the latest segment Bobby had created and flipping the frozen mutant into the air. He flew upside down towards the rocks, but managed to toss the device over to Kitty and Peter before his back slammed into the boulders.
Kitty picked the Recombinator out of the air, fumbling it a bit but saving it from hitting the ground. Peter had stood and was firing his webs into the Lizard's eyes as the beast began to charge towards Kitty. "We've probably got one shot left, so make it good!" he yelled to her as he flipped over the villain. Spidey grabbed the Lizard's scaled arm, wrangling it into an elbow lock behind his back and pinning it in place with webbing. He made for the other arm but the Lizard lifted his long tail, forcing Peter to leap away. The animal ripped his hand free, charging to where he had last seen Kitty as he struggled with the webbing on his eyes when was stopped again, this time by a battering ram of ice slamming into his shoulder. Bobby swung the long pole of ice, this time hitting the Lizard across the chest, sprawling him out and breaking the ice.
"Now Kitty!" Bobby said as the Lizard struggled to his feet.
She held her breath, dropping to one knee as Peter had done earlier, steadied the device as much as she could and fired.
Unable to see where the beam was coming from and dodge it, the Lizard was hit directly in the chest, throwing him backwards to the ground. The beam continued for a moment into thin air before it shorted out. The Recombinator's high pitched sound died, the various readout screens blinking off. She dumped the dead metal onto the ground and joined Bobby and Peter. They watched in silence as Doctor Connors's body rapidly changed back into its human form.
"Nice shot 'cat," Bobby said at last, kissing the top of her head. She smiled and wrapped her arm around his waist. "And nice moves Spider-Man."
"Not too bad yourself Iceman," Peter said. He gave one final look at the unconscious Connors before glancing around. "No cops yet, but I'm not sure if we should move him; we might want to wait a bit."
"My ice will lead them right here eventually. Hopefully the little detour I took after Kitty got him to the ground will lead them away long enough."
"Maybe we can take the lab coat off and say it was some guy we found who was attacked," Kitty suggested.
Their debate was cut short by the sound of a rapidly approaching helicopter. They stared at each other, not sure what to do. While the thin tree line around the clearing offered them some cover, the gleaming white and blue ice slides all over the area all led right to that spot.
"What if Kitty phased him into the ground? That might hide him from the cops for now," Peter said with a nervous shrug.
"I don't think that would help," Bobby said, peeking through the trees at the helicopter. "It's worse than the cops."
"How can it possibly be worse?"
Bobby turned back to Kitty, his lips pursed tight. "It's one of ours."
And sure enough, over his shoulder, she could see the Velocity landing.
A/N: It's the story that just won't end! I swear, one last Epilogue like chapter to go. Not that any of you mind that there's more.