Ahh, chapter eight. It's nice to see you here, if my horrible execution of plot hasn't driven you away. This is a short chapter, because it's not necessary to make it any longer. I offer my congratulations and sincere gratitude for making it this far, and I shall eat a cookie in your honor! Munch! Okay, anyway…
Bobby's group, which consisted of himself, Jubilee, and Jamie, was not in fact faring any better. They were the only group without an experienced X-Men with them, and they hadn't really had any training themselves that would aid them as X-Men in the future, so decisions were argued over and analyzed and cross-analyzed and then discarded altogether, and this had happened enough that Bobby was annoyed with Jubilee, Jubilee was about ready to murder Bobby, and Jamie was extremely bored in general.
In ten minutes they'd barely made it down the first hall, and unintentionally made enough noise that two guards in the adjoining hall had silently but efficiently gotten into position on either side of the corners and were ready to ambush the children just as they reached the perpendicular hall.
"I still have to go to the bathroom," Jamie said absently, rubbing his eyes. He'd woken up from a mental nap moments before. Jubilee rolled her own brown eyes and was about to say something, but got distracted. Bobby glanced at her, then cuffed Jamie's ear.
"You should have went before we left." He said. Jamie stomped his foot on the tile in self-righteousness.
"I tried to, you all wouldn't let me! You said we had to go! Well, we're here and I have to pee!" he whined.
"Hey, um, guys?" Jubilee waved an arm vaguely between the boys' faces. "Why is the wall throwing a shadow? Generally, I thought, straight walls don't have lumpy shadows. But that may have changed."
Behind the wall, out of bodily sight of the three teenagers, one of the guards slapped his helmeted forehead. Accursed florescent lighting. It threw twelve shadows instead of just one. The other one made a rude gesture at him with his armored gloved hand, then resumed position.
"Hey, yeah…hey, I've got a plan."
Jamie and Jubilee groaned.
"No, here…" he yanked them both into a small huddle by their collars and whispered enthusiastically, then they all casually broke apart and idly meandered up the corridor. Jamie even managed to whistle a soft tune. The guards mentally counted down to each other and jumped in the way, guns pointed at the dozen teenagers- dozen?
"Hi!" nine identical Jamies said perkily, and then swarmed the guards enthusiastically, messing up their ammo and radio and even tossing one of the guards' guns a bit away before being reabsorbed into the original Jamie.
"Jubes, now!" Bobby formed several baseball-sized ice balls and tossed them to Jubilee one by one, who charged them up and threw them at the guards, where they exploded and large chunks of ice slammed with explosive force into the guards. The first exploding iceball was enough to give the guards a headache, the second made one of them curse out loud and the other drop his semi-automatic and clutch his helmet in pain, and the third iceball knocked them out.
The three teens stood there for a minute, frozen in position, as silence filled the halls. Bobby still had one arm out from his light tosses to Jubilee. Jamie was awkwardly leaning against one wall from the effort of duplicating himself nine times and reabsorbing them all simultaneously completely under his conscious control for the first time. Jubilee was still in a pitcher's pose from chucking their homemade mutant grenades at strangers.
And then as one, they all began breathing again.
"Did you see that? I did it! I finally did it right!" Jamie was practically jumping up and down with joy at his sudden control over his powers. Jubilee smiled in relief.
"Same here, I can't believe I didn't screw that up."
"But I did it! I made more of me on purpose!" he paused suddenly, and then grinned evilly. "The world shall never be the same."
"So this is great and all- by the way, you throw awesome for a girl, Jubes- but we're sort of on a rescue mission. Let's go…rescue." Bobby was grinning despite his words.
"Sure thing, Iceman." Jubilee smiled. And then one of their guards regained consciousness and pressed a button on his belt before any of the three could stop them. A loud screeching alarm filled the air, and the New Recruits ran down the adjoining hall as fast as their legs could carry them to get away before more guards showed up, all bravado gone.