Chapter Nineteen: Weightless

Na-Na: I bet you all really hate me for the end of the last chapter. And for the shortness of it in general. And about me being totally off about when I'd update…Well, I've had writer's block so very badly. Eight months of no writing badly. I had the next couple of chapters outlined and then whoosh, I burned them because I hated them, and Will was such an emo, and then I didn't know what to do when I started over. Bleh. No excuses. So here's the next chappie.

With that squared away, turn off all cell phones, stay quiet, and remember the author does not own Sky High. And please, enjoy the chapter.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" Will asked, desperate, "I mean, I don't want to believe that she's… that she's dead..."

"I don't know Will." He looked past her, at Warren.

"Can't we thaw her out or—?"

"I'm trying," Warren cut him off, "It's not working."

"How can it not work?!" Will demanded, "She's frozen right? Shouldn't the fire be able to melt the ice?"

"She's too cold… I'm trying, but my fire's just not having any effect. If I try to make the fire any hotter… I don't know what will happen."

"I—" Will slammed his fist into the ground, "Damn it! Damn it!"

Pulling himself and Layla up, he crossed the gym over to where Warren knelt before Tenni. The flames were licking wildly about the other boy's hand and the ice against her cheek now. Still, there was no reaction. The ice remained solid against the fire, not wavering even a bit. Warren's teeth were grit in frustration. Will saw his other hand clenched so tightly, blood was beginning to drip where his nails dug into the skin of his hand.

"Warren!" Layla exclaimed, noticing, "Your hand! You're hurting yourself!"

The pyrokinetic didn't even respond to her.

"Warren!" She cried, tears threatening to spill again.

"Please just—" Layla was cut off when everything around her started to weigh down on her, dragging her to the floor. Will was dragged down along with her.

"What's happening?" Will yelled, looking wildly around in panic.

"The school is falling!" Layla responded, as loud as possible over the roaring winds. His eyes widened, as he took in the gravity of the situation. (A/N: Please God, forgive me for my sin against humanity, stupid unintentional pun.) Glancing at both her and Warren, then finally Tenni, he looked them both in the eye, his expression serious.

"You're going to take care of her while I'm gone." They knew it wasn't a request.

"Go do the hero thing already, Stronghold!" Warren barked at him. With a nod, Will propelled himself up and out the window. Hopefully he'd slow the school down before it met a destructive end.

Meanwhile, Somewhere In the Antigravity Device Conduit on the Other Side of the School

It was official. Magenta hated life.

This dance was supposed to be fun. A chance to deck herself out in the most gothy outfit ever, dance as dorkily as she wanted to, spend time messing with Zach, and not have to take shit from anybody about her lame power. Was it too much to ask for one peaceful school dance? Apparently, it was.

Frickin' Queen G decided to be a villain tonight of all nights and unleash all of her pent-up teenage vengeance PMS on the school. If Magenta ever got the chance, she'd give the that little snob a piece of her mind…While she stood on the other side of reinforced bullet-proof glass, bars, with the other girl securely strapped down and no technology anywhere near by. Sure, she was pissed at Gwen, but she wasn't suicidal enough to go head-to-head with a villain for something that small. Not that the threat of losing her life was a small thing.

Of course, there was that time when Warren had been threatening Will. But that had been different. Then, she'd had back up.

She was starting to get off the point.

Why she hated life? Well, the reason was primarily the fact that because Gwen, Royal Pain, whatever, had so elegantly screwed the night over. Now she and all of her friends were the only non-baddies left in the school over the age of two. The villain's master plan was to make them all villains and when she had everyone carted off, she'd drop the school out of the sky. God, Magenta could only imagine the kind of chaos that would cause. A whole bunch of civilians would probably be killed when the school dropped on them. It would set off a whole bunch of people wondering what the hell a school was doing floating in the sky. All those doubts and questions would then lead to a whole bunch of conspiracy theorists claiming the government had been conducting secret testing up in the sky while trying to keep the plebians ignorant (which was technically only half wrong).

And you know what? All of that, nothing compared to what she was being put through now. Things had been fine until Layla told them about the whole "OMG the School's Gonna Fall!" issue. She was all for playing the skeptic pessimist, claiming they'd all die and being the perfect buzz kill. What she was not up to was being the hero of the hour.

Now how exactly does one with the ability of becoming a guinea pig go about being a hero? Simple really. Turn into a guinea pig, crawl into a freaking small ass conduit thinga-ma-jig and then get to the anti-gravity device and disable the sabotage device by chewing through a wire. See? Only, it gets sooooooo much better. She's also supposed to chew through single a red wire. And guess what? There's like, a bajillion other red wires too. So not only was she forced to help save a school full of people turned babies (most people she didn't like), but her intelligence and patience was being tested by goddamn RED WIRES!

If they made it out of this alive, she'd have to talk her mother into sending her and her friends on a week long, all expenses paid, vacation to some island in Hawaii. Hopefully an island with a low disaster rate. Maybe even push that week to two weeks or a month, or something. 'Cause seriously, she was not going through this ordeal without a lot of rest, relaxation, and heavy doses of therapy. Lots and lots of therapy.

Now that she thought about it, maybe she was just not cut out for the super hero gig.

Hadn't she been saying that all along, since the day she'd been shoved on the bus?

"It's a bit too late to be thinking that," she mutter-squeaked to herself. Putting her paws together, she thought a silent prayer in hope that she'd live through this…

Only to be interrupted by a sudden rumbling. Said rumbling became so violent, she was ping-ponged all about the conduit. Eventually, she managed to grab a hold of something and re-secure herself at the base of the anti-gravity device. Obviously her time to finish this up was running out. Cursing in as many languages as she could thanks to her parent's (misguided, expensive) tutoring, she got back to work on chewing the wire she hoped was the right one.

Outside the School

Now, more than ever, he felt numb. Even when he'd first gotten his invulnerability from his father, he'd never felt so… cold. His focus was supposed to be completely fixed on what he was doing now. Saving the school. Saving Layla, his parents, and everyone. Stopping Royal Pain from succeeding at her nefarious plot.

He thought he could save everyone. He though he knew everything. From the beginning it was obvious he didn't have all the facts. Naïve enough to believe that maybe Gwen was doing this in revenge for her mother. That maybe there was still a noble cause lost somewhere along the road. That maybe all he had to do was show her the right way. No, Gwen wasn't a nice person. She'd fooled him, she'd fooled his parents, she'd fooled Tenni. Yesterday night, he'd caught the first glimpse of the true Gwen hidden under all the pretty wrapping paper. It was just a lure to attract stupid flunkies to her side. For the longest time, he'd fallen prey to it. And it was his fault that Tenni had gotten caught up in all this.

He suspected something was up the minute his mother had informed him that Tenni was sleeping over at Gwen's house. It had taken six months to convince Tenni it was okay to sleep over at Layla's house (who only lived a couple houses down the street, by the way), and that was only when he'd agreed to come with her. No matter how much Tenni admired Gwen, there was no way she would've agreed to sleep over at Gwen's house so readily. It had been so obvious something was up, but he'd been to busy being self-absorbed to notice what was going on with her life. Things had changed this year for her just as much as they had for him.

All that time he'd spent feeling sorry for himself, those times it seemed as if the world was against him, it had been a hundred times worse for Tenni. Though Tenni freely spoke to him—and only him—about her life before she'd come to live with them, he could never truly understand how awful life was for her then. Tenni accepted it for what it was, the government's way of insuring a watchful eye would be kept on her to make sure she didn't follow in her mother's path. Didn't want to dirty their own hands with the effort, and thus dumped her on the doorstep making her their problem. Still, she'd grown to trust and even love them. In no time, she had become a part of their family, it had been easy to forget that she was just Jetstream's niece, that they were just cousins. As far as anyone in their house cared, Tenni was Steve and Josie's daughter, Tenni really was his sister. That single year with them had almost erased all the unhappiness from her life.

And unfortunately, it had taken less then a year to destroy all the progress. Like taking one step forward, twenty back, and losing the road in the process.

He had a job he had to finish though. Now wasn't the time to give up. There was still hope. A chance his sister would come back. If everyone could be fixed, maybe mom or dad, or even Medulla could fix her. But it wouldn't matter if he let the school fall. Everyone would die if he didn't succeed. He'd never allow his loved ones, his parents, his friends, Layla and Tenni, die.

With renewed determination, he propelled himself towards the bottom of the school faster. Once he got there, he placed both of his hands against the school and pushed.

Nothing.

He pushed again. Harder.

Still nothing.

He pushed and he pushed. He said he wouldn't let them die right? This had to work.

But there was still nothing.

Will felt as if the school were falling faster than ever. He was internally panicking as he poured all of his super-strength into pushing the school back up. And failing spectacularly.

"Shit!"

And now he was vocalizing his panic.

"Shit! Shit! SHIT!"

Vocalizing it very loudly. He was almost positive if his mother were in her right mind and present, nothing would've stopped her from scolding him and twisting his ear.

His strength was doing nothing to help him. The school was just too heavy. He tried to throw his shoulder into it, but that wasn't getting him anywhere either. Gravity seemed to be conspiring against him as well, because the school was beginning to pick up speed as it continued to hurtle towards the ground. It was growing to become too much for him to handle.

Soon, Will found himself flattened against the bottom of the school, face down. Like that made anything any better. Now he could see the ground coming up to meet him and the school. With a grimace (and girlish screams, which he would deny later), he realized if he screwed this up, he'd be the first to go.

No, wait that wasn't true.

If his eyes weren't fooling him, those tiny, ant sized dots of color were people. Which meant they'd probably go just before he kicked the bucket. Yet again, not a very comforting thought. But the reality of being squished to death by a school was never a particularly pleasant thought. It was getting closer, and the ant-sized dots were starting too look detailed. In fact, if he concentrated and listened over the sound of the rushing wind, he could hear them screaming. If only it weren't so heavy.

And suddenly, it was like all his prayers were answered.

The overwhelming pressure of the falling school began to decrease. The minute he felt the slack, he began to push back against it and was astonished to find that he was actually significantly slowing down. He was no longer being squished flat in the under surface of the school. It got so light, he didn't even have to put effort into keeping it up, like it was wieghtless. He could probably hold it with one hand. Though he wasn't going to try out that theory. Better safe than sorry.

Eventually, he reached ground level, well, house level. He was currently standing on a two story house watching two people post-screaming their heads off staring up at him with a mix of terror, relief and awe. Will gave a huge sigh of relief. Potentially disastrous situation diverted. He was going to just fly off when he noticed that the innocent bystanders were still standing down there looking like they could still wet their pants. It wouldn't hurt to snap them out of it.

"Woah," he breathed out, giving them what he hoped was his Reassuring Heroes Smile ™, "That could have been messy."

They stared back at him blankly, and he almost felt sorry for them. Almost.

"Well," Will said, starting to feel awkward under their stares, "Good night!"

With that said, he launched himself and the school skyward. It wasn't long before he decided they were at an acceptable attitude, and released the school. He was happy to see that it sunk momentarily only the stabilize seconds afterwards in the air on its own. Suddenly feeling the adrenaline and excitement of saving the school slip away, he felt incredibly exhausted. Heaving himself to the edge, he felt hands and arms helping him up. A smile touched his lips when he saw that it was Ron pulling him up.

"Will!"

And there was Layla, running to them from the building's doors. Will nearly collapsed into her arms.

"You did it!"

"Yeah…I did." He paused, as if remembering. "Tenni, is she—?"

Layla frowned, "There's no change, but nothing happened to her while we were falling. Warren and I kept her safe."

At her mention, Will noticed that the pyrokinetic was absent.

"Is he still with her?"

Layla nodded.

"I'm going to go carry her to the nurse's office. After that, well, we'll see what we can do from there."

It had been a really depressing trip for Will. He'd left unloading the babies from the vans to Warren and Layla. Warren had seemed rather reluctant to leave Tenni's side when Will said he'd take her to the infirmary, but he'd accepted the job Will had given him anyway. He wanted to be surprised at the fact that his once number one enemy was treating him civilly and respectfully, but it had been a trying day. Not much could really shock him right now. They had averted the main crisis but there was still the clean up to take care of. Gwen and the rest of her lackies had to be apprehended, the babies needed to be returned to their natural age, and they needed to figure out how to unfreeze Tenni. So far, he only knew how to accomplish the first.

For ages, he sat next to the patient's table, watching Tenni's frozen, unmoving form. Not for the first time, he asked himself why he'd been so stupid as to drive her to getting herself mixed up in all of this business. She had supported him through his hard times this year, like the night he'd been made a sidekick. There had been no questions asked, she just lay beside him and held him as he cried tears of anger, disappointment and shame. Stood up and protected him against Warren (the boy she was crazy for!), something he wasn't sure he could've done if the tables were turned and it was her and Gwen. Especially considering just how into Gwen he'd been.

Resting his head against the wall, he closed his eyes and tried to stop thinking about anything. It felt easier to do it. He didn't even realize he'd dozed off until he felt someone shaking him awake. He opened his eyes and found himself staring right back into Nurse Spex's largely magnified ones. Using what restraint he could, he stopped himself from jumping.

"Good evening Mr. Stronghold. I was called in to help out with this situation. We have managed to start restoring the infants back to their grown states. Your parents will be fine."

"Nurse Spex! What about my sister Tenni? Is she going to be okay?"

"Fortunately, we have dealt with a similar problem this year. Though your sister's case sounds more serious than that occasion, Professor Medulla and I both agree that we can reverse the freezing effect and resuscitate her."

"So you can help her?"

Nurse Spex smiled softly at him.

"Yes dear, we can."

Both of them turned to see the door opening. The first to enter was an adult Medulla, carrying some sort of contraption under one arm and a ray gun in another. Spilling into the room after him was Layla, and Zach and the rest of their friends. Tears almost came to his eyes when he saw his mom and dad coming in right after them. Josie surged forward to pull her son into a tight hug, Steve moving in to wrap his arms around them both.

"I'm sorry! All of this was my fault! Gwen, and the Pacifier, and Tenni! It was all my fault…"

"Will! Son, it's okay!" said Steve, breaking away from the embrace and to look his son in the eye. "No one's hurt, and we're going to fix all of it. It's going to be okay. Your sister's going to be alright."

He felt his mother place her hand on his cheek and lovingly stroke it. "Your father's right sweetie. You and you friends saved us. The worst is over."

And to his horror, he burst into tears. He swiped furiously at them, embarrassed that he was crying in front of his parents, his friends, his teachers and his soon to be girlfriend. Everyone started to laugh, and he felt himself laugh with them. He was happy, but at the same time, he wished he didn't have to humiliate himself like this in front of them.

It wasn't long before the group found themselves kicked out of the infirmary. Most of them had protested until Nurse Spex promised them that they'd be contacted when they were sure she was okay (as well as threatened by Medulla that if they continued to annoy him during the procedure, he'd put them through the most painful torture he could think of with his enormous brain). Griping all the way, they headed back to the gym where they were conducting the de-pacifying, anxious about the outcome of the procedure, even though they had the nurse's reassurances. Still, they left feeling more care-free than they had previously.

No one noticed as one of them silently broke off from the group and headed back.

Well, that is except for Layla.

But she wasn't going to say anything.

Magenta's Short

"Great job, Magenta!"

Ethan was thanking her.

"Thank you thank you thank you!"

Layla was thanking her.

"Maj, you saved the day!"

Will was thanking her too.

"…"

A cool nod from Warren. Interpreted as thanks.

"I love you!"

Violent hugging. Zach was being an idiot.

But she didn't really mind so much. He was kind of a cute idiot. And she did deserve his praise.

A/N: Some things I'd like to explain before we finish. The device that Gwen used to make Tenni evil in the last episode, the reason I created it was basically because it filled a plot hole for me in the movie. She planned to make them all babies and then turn them into villains. But how was she going to get them to really be villains? When she was pacified in the beginning, she retained all her adult memories and remained evil. So, the same theory could be applied to the rest of the Pacifier victims. I made the device to explain how the babies would become evil in the end. The only reason Tenni could even try to resist was because it was only a prototype.

Oh, and cookie points to who ever guesses where I got the idea for the name Queen G from....(Hint: Queen C.)

And thas all folks.

Next Chapter: Vida

Post Date: Can't promise anything. If I do, it might be a lie. Lying's not nice.