Disclaimer: Stan Lee, thanks for the use of your characters! And thanks to Fox for making the movies, too. Obviously, neither of them are me, so on with the fanfiction.
Triple Scoop
As soon as the group had made it off the property, they felt a few drops of rain fall and looked up nervously. The forcast hadn't called for rain, so none of them had thought to bring umbrellas. There was a little cloud above them that dissipated as soon as they saw it, just Storm's way of reminding them to behave. They all sighed with relief and continued on their walk. It was two blocks to the ice cream place and the six of them took up the whole sidewalk the whole way there. The two newer couples relied heavily on Rogue and Bobby for conversation that wasn't forced and movements that weren't awkward. Bobby and Rogue came through with easy, constant talk and relaxed poses, so the other four didn't have to deal with shy silences. By the time they reached the ice cream shop, everyone was relaxed and chatting together. Jimmy even told a joke that made Jubilee giggle.
The line for ice cream was long, which gave them plenty of time to decide what they wanted. Rogue and Bobby opted to share a chocolate malt and Bobby, being the expert on all things cold, turned to help the others decide.
"You can never go wrong with a shake. They have pretty good banana splits here too. And there's this brownie thing with chocolate ice cream, but it's got too much chocolate if you ask me."
"No one did," Rogue said playfully.
Bobby rolled his eyes at her, pecked her on the cheek, and continued, "They've got mint chocolate chip cookie dough here too."
"They combined them!" Rogue clarified like it was the greatest idea anyone had ever had.
"Hey, what's today?" Bobby asked.
"Sunday," Rogue answered.
"Well then they've got apple pie with your choice of ice cream too. It's a Sunday only deal."
"Oh, Bobby," Rogue hit him in the arm excitedly, "tell them about the cones."
"Oh right," he said. "They've got this deal here with the cones. You can get a waffle cone with any three flavors of ice cream for the two scoop price."
"Hey, we're almost up," Rogue said, drawing their attention back to the drastically shortened line.
"What do you want?" Jimmy asked Jubilee.
"I don't know. What do you want?"
Kitty and Piotr's conversation went much the same. Finally Jimmy suggested the banana split and Jubilee emphatically agreed. They ordered after Rogue and Bobby, leaving Kitty and Piotr to make a hurried final decision.
"Triple scoop?" Kitty asked Pete as they stepped up to the window. He nodded and they silently settled on a neapolitan cone: one scoop chocolate, one vanilla, and one strawberry. They were walking away with their various ice creams when Kitty heard a vaguely familiar voice cut through the air.
"Yeah, you wouldn't happen to have Baked Alaska here, would you?"
Baked Alaska was a type of rare dessert. A sponge cake filled with ice cream and then lit on fire, Kitty had only had Baked Alaska once in her life and it had been delicious. Something about the voice ordering it made her stop cold in her tracks, but made her terrified to turn around at the same time. She was glad to see that Piotr, Bobby, and Rogue had done the same. Jubilee cocked her head to the side, as if trying to place the voice. Only Jimmy was unaffected by it and only stopped when he realized that everyone else had.
"What's wrong?"
Jubilee was the first to turn around to see who it was and even then she could only stand and stare with her jaw hanging open.
"You don't?" the voice said loudly. "Sure you do! You've got ice cream in there, right? You just need a little..."
"NO!" Jubilee managed to shout, but too late.
"...fire," John Allerdyce finished before spreading a ring of flames around the building.
Bobby spun at Jubilee's outcry, but his move to ice the fire did nothing. "Pete, get Marie and Jimmy out of here!" Bobby shouted. The boy's power to cancel out the powers of those near him obviously didn't reach Pyro, but Bobby and the rest were affected.
Rogue's mouth hardened defiantly into a frown. "Bobby Drake, if you think for one second I'm going to run away like some sort o-"
Piotr pushed Rogue and Jimmy behind him. "Stay there," he ordered.
Rogue was still obviously unhappy with being treated like she was helpless, but she kept quiet about it. At least Pete hadn't asked her to run. Kitty was amazed once again at his perceptiveness, but didn't have too much time to marvel at it. Pyro was advancing, both his flame throwers lit.
"What d'you want, John?" Bobby asked.
"Nice to see you too Iceman," John shot back sarcastically. His flames suddenly went out. He looked at his wrists, then back at their group, then took a step back. The flamethrowers spurted back to life. "So it is him? Good. Almost didn't recognize you with hair, kid."
"What d'you want, Pyro?" Bobby repeated.
"Nothing. Just your girlfriend and the kid."
Jubilee said something angrily in Chinese and Piotr added something calmly, but threatening in Russian. Kitty felt the need to chime in, so said in plain old English, "Go crawl under a rock, dickhead."
"Oh come on. If I take her off your hands, you can have Bobby all to yourself, Kitty," Pyro prodded.
Piotr took a step forward, but Kitty grabbed his arm to hold him back. "We said you can't have them, so get lost."
"Look, I just wanna figure out how to reverse the cure. You can have 'em back when I'm done with them."
"No," Jimmy whispered.
Jubilee flexed her fingers, but the sparks she wanted to shoot at their fire-loving foe wouldn't come. She had to settle for a verbal attack. "How is Mr. Lehnsherr these days?"
"Magneto will be fine as soon as I'm done here. Look," Pyro said reasonably, "you really don't have a choice. You've got the kid over there and I can just do this..." He spread a ring of fire around them. "See?"
"In a fair fight you wouldn't stand a chance," Kitty taunted. "Bobby kicked your butt last time, in case you forgot."
"If Bobby would just send the kid away, he could fight too, isn't that right Iceman? Tell me when you start melting, ok?"
"What happened to you John?" Rogue asked, stepping to the front of the group.
John rolled his eyes. "I'm trying to do you a favor, Rogue, and put you back the way you're supposed to be. NOW!"
Out of nowhere, someone shot through the flames, grabbed Jimmy, and sprinted away before the X-Men had time to react. Jubilee watched the man disappear back through the fire with Jimmy and then spun angrily to face Pyro. Her fingers sparkled with little fireworks.
"You have two seconds to bring him back," she said gravely.
John was clearly not worried. Jubilee didn't look particularly menacing in her yellow sundress, so John was shocked when sparks of light shot from her fingers at him and exploded all around him. He was knocked backward from the force and from shock.
Kitty didn't get to enjoy that sight though, because as soon as she had recovered from the surprise of a second attacker, she'd taken off after him. She was aware of Piotr thundering after her, because his metal form pounded the ground with every step. And then, suddenly, he powered down for no apparent reason.
"We're close," he told Kitty as he came up next to her. She tried to phase and found that she couldn't. They were close.
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A/N: Any guesses on who Pyro's accomplice is? And I'm still hoping to finish chapter four. It won't be more than two days, I PROMISE! Thanks for reading!
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