Chapter 11
Power Struggle
So now Reed's on fire, the kid's super-stretchy, and I'm about to get wrapped up by him. Johnny thought. And no sooner had he had the thought was that true. For a moment. The instant the boy's super-stretched arm touched Johnny, the power was transferred to Johnny, and the arm was forced to take normal shape.
So now Johnny was stretchy, Reed was on fire, and the kid had the techno-path ability, or whatever it should be called. But then Johnny saw a big problem. How where they going to catch the kid, when every time they touched him, they swapped powers. What they needed was some way to stop him without touching the kid.
Reed realized that before Johnny did and used his newfound fire ability to hurl a small fireball at the kid. The teenager saw it, and ducked, and the fireball instead hit Ben, who was in the process of rejoining the fight. The boy then, knowing his power better than any of them, used it in self-defense.
The lights in the cabin suddenly flashed on, and brightened to near blinding levels. Everyone had to look away, and since the boy stood in front of the cabin, they couldn't look right at him without risking getting blinded by the light. Except one person.
Suddenly invisible arms wrapped around the boy and picked him up into the air. The boy struggled for a moment against Sue's grip, while the others watched, waiting to see if they would be needed.
But again, everybody forgot about the transfer ability that the boy had, and after a moment, Sue reappeared, and the lights in the cabin dimmed to tolerable levels. Sue struggled to hold the boy still, but ultimately failed when the boy used a forcefield to push himself out of Sue's grasp, knocking both of them apart.
Johnny ran forward and grabbed the boy, knowing that if the boy had Sue's powers, they needed some way to keep track of him. But the powers were transferred again, and the boy slipped out of Johnny's grip by using Reed's power, leaving Johnny with Sue's.
Johnny knew they were getting nowhere fast, and that physical combat with the boy just wasn't going to be possible. He needed to trap the boy by some other means. Like a forcefield. Inclose the kid in a forcefield bubble, and he can't get away. And currently, Johnny had the ability to control forcefields.
But the kid was smart, and quickly ran up and shoved Johnny. The action did little to harm Johnny, but it was the touch that counted. The kid had Sue's power now, while Johnny was stuck with Reed's again. Johnny wasn't sure he could generate a big enough forcefield anyway.
Ben finally got back into the fight, and grabbed the kid himself, but promptly the boy turned into solid rock while Ben turned to normal. The kid, having the stronger power, was able to shove Ben aside.
"Ben!" Johnny shouted, chasing after the kid as he made a break for it, "Enclose the kid in a forcefield!"
Ben tried, but all he managed to do was to fire a very small one off like a projectile in Johnny's direction. It slammed into Johnny, which shoved Johnny forward into the boy. As both picked themselves up, Johnny was now the walking rock while the kid had Reed's power.
"I can't produce one big enough!" Ben shouted, as the others all ran to grab the boy all at once. "I can't control the power that well!"
"Only I could control the power like that, I guess." Sue said, trying to grab the boy.
But the boy had used Reed's power to coiled up his legs into springs and jumped up onto the roof of the cabin. He started to clamber up to the top of the slanted surface.
"Okay, so Sue need's the power, but only the kid has the transfer ability." Reed said, as they stood on the ground, trying to figure out how to reach the kid. "In order to get the power back to Sue, it has to go to the kid first."
"Okay, so we have Ben touch the kid, and then have Sue touch him." Johnny said. "Only how do we reach him from down here?"
"It can be remedied." Sue said, holding her arms out like she was manipulating a forcefield.
Only a moment later, they all saw that wasn't what she was doing, for the moment the kid reached the top of the roof, the Fantasticar hovered up above it, with no pilot, and shot towards the boy. It purposely shot over too high, and wouldn't have hit the boy, but it came close enough that it startled the boy and he lost his grip, slipping off the roof to the ground.
At first, Johnny didn't understand what had happened, but then remembered that Sue was the one currently with the techno-path ability. He realized that she must have been the one controlling the Fantasticar, now coming to land on the dock by the lake. The Fantastic Four, as a team, then gathered around the spot where the boy had landed on the ground. Since he had Reed's power, he was unharmed and was conscious, but was stunned, and merely looked up at them.
Calmly, Ben bent down and touched the boy for a moment. Then Sue bent down and touched the boy for an equal amount of time. Then the Fantastic Four took a step back as the boy was enclosed in a forcefield, being rightfully controlled by Sue.
Johnny took a step towards the forcefield and stared at the boy being held within. "You've been a very bad boy." he said, giving the boy a rocky grin of victory.
One more chapter to go!