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Issue #22 |
"Unchecked Power" Part Three: Consequences Written By Doug Bookey and Aaron Stanley |
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Doom sweeps upon the small team of X-Men with a thunderous wave of air. The gigantic flame bird unfurls its wings just above them and seemingly folds into nothingness, as the gorgeous woman hovers in mid-air; formerly consumed by fire, there is not a scorch mark on her flawless skin.
"Jean!" Scott Summers yells; it’s the only noise to be made by the awe induced friends of Jean Grey-Summers. "Let us help you!"
"Help me? Dear husband, you friends have come here to destroy me. Is that what you want?"
Scott lets his head fall away from the figure of his wife high in the air, searching the eyes of everyone gathered around him. All their faces are saying the same thing, and he knows. He knows the thoughts are unanimous: she is no longer the friend they know and love. This is no longer their Jean. "Ororo? Bobby?"
They cannot offer any words to help the grief-stricken husband, the man whose arm is left broken in several places by the very thought of the person living in his wife's body. "No! You listen to me, Jean. We vowed For Better and For Worse; I will not give up on you that easy!"
"Always the predictable leader, dear Scott. They rally behind you with the utterance of a single word. It is admirable--the control you have over these lackeys."
She floats down from the sky; flames flicker and dance all around her red and gold body glove. Her eyes offer nothing but insight to a pair of cold, dead, rocks of coal. Blacker than mirrored pitch, Scott can see himself in the shine of the soulless orbs. "Don't let this..."
He breathes in and stops at the instant Jean's thoughts command his body to lock up. Lifting him into the air as she raises a finger, she twists his body to show her former friends the weakness of their stalwart leader. "What is it that you hope to accomplish?"
His limp body flies through the air, and Jean has yet to move a muscle, his face grinding into the rock and water left behind by the ice melting with her very presence. "This is a hopeless cause, X-Men; you cannot hope to contain me, let alone kill me. There isn't a desire strong enough in a single one of you to do what you think needs to be done. You are pathetic, the whole lot of you."
"Jean, listen to me...."
"Be silent, false goddess."
Strong-willed and defiant, Storm lasts but a moment before the wordless commands of Jean bring the weather witch to her knees. "Where is your lightning now?
"Strike me down! Burn my flesh with the heat of the Earth! I know it is in you. Do it!" Jean's words thunder through the African Goddess's bones. "You know it is necessary, but you doubt your power."
Ororo moans, she tries to scream for help, but words fail to form, as air fails to fill her lungs. She falls face first into the mud of the soaked Earth. "You are waste of flesh," Jean whispers to the woman who was once her closest friend.
Jean allows her feet to touch the ground; her closed fists are taught as ambient heat threatens the men and women that surround her. "Oh, little girl." She laughs, as Kitty Pryde cries out. "You are physically intangible, but you're still useless. A ghost to everyone, you don't even know yourself any longer. A toy. A plaything to a despicable man who has even been beaten by Drake when he was a teenager. You couldn't resist his calling."
Kitty's arms are locked to her side, her entire body as rigid as a board; Jean Grey raises a single hand. With her pointer finger, Jean motions to the horizon. Kitty Pryde becomes a rocket, unable to scream, unable to speak, her form is forced solid, and the glass of an already shattered window in the rubble that was once the Summers' home tears at her exposed skin. Her unconscious body tumbles against the hardwood floor, blood flowing forth from the open femoral artery.
"Paging Doctor Reyes." Jean smiles with a sinister glee. Cecilia doesn't think twice about the men she leaves behind or the episode where she threatened Kitty's life only days before. The doctor sprints to the former household, sliding across the trail of blood Kitty's supposedly intangible body left behind. The doctor falls to her knees, throwing her hands to the young woman's pelvis, and, for the first time in a very long time, Ceclia Reyes prays.
Three men close their distance on Jean Grey-Summers--or at least the woman inside her body. "This isn't you, Jean. You can beat this."
Bobby's voice is shaking; the truth of the statement is lost with him. He grasps at his chest, as the ice begins to melt from his body. "What...What are you doing?"
He falls to his knees; the last of the ice that he had become has returned to flesh within seconds. Several painful seconds. "Your heart is beating much too fast, Robert. I remember that: you always did excite easily."
The Iceman gasps for air, the pressure on his chest too much for the twenty-six year-old in excellent shape. Blood seeps from his mouth and nose; his eyes twitch, as he tries to speak.
White hot rings of plasma light up the air around her. "Stop this!" the man called Havok screams. "What more do you have to prove?!"
"Plenty, dear brother-in-law."
Bobby is allowed a moment of reprieve for Havok's interruption. Collapsing to the unnatural marshland below him, he coughs out semi-solid blood and spit. "Join your brother," Jean's voice is a command, and, with that, Alex Summers' body lifts off the ground. Kurt Wagner can only watch in horror, as Alex is tossed away, as if he were a simple plaything.
"Hello, Kurt. How is Logan?"
"Jean, please." Six fingers are extended from both his hands; even still, he hopes to get to her. "We are friends, Jean; we can help you."
"Please. Don't try to entertain me with your stories on an impossible deity." Her smile returns to a sinister display of almost demonic evil, something of an irony not lost on the man once chasing ordination, even a man whose very appearance would suggest a being from the demonic plane. "You were always faithful, my dear Kurt, but even your faith stands tested."
Kurt Wagner screams, but there are not many to hear him. The heat scours his body; the fine blue fur singes, leaving behind the rank odor of burning hair and flesh. "Your words were always musical, my dear Kurt, but I wonder: will your faith help you turn these boils to gold? Will we ever hear the music of your voice again?"
Her arms cross her chest, as she watches Kurt writhe in agony and finally fall from consciousness.
"Robert, Robert, Robert, you're still awake?"
His hands push his body out of the mud, and, as he struggles to stand, he wills a cocoon to envelope his friend, hoping to soothe the burns.
"Ever the eager one to help, aren't you, lover?"
"That was a long time ago." Drake forces himself to stand, despite the pain and his body's wish to lay down.
"A great many things were a long time ago, but you still dream of me, don't you?"
Drake grinds his teeth. "Something better came along, for the second time around. I haven't thought about the two of us since after Lorna and I broke it off."
"Always being left in the shadow of those Summers boys, aren't you, Bobby?"
He spits out a mouthful of blood-mixed saliva. "If you're going to hurt me, you might as well just get on with it. I think you owe me that much."
She smiles her evil smile. "Very well then."
He once could barely stand, hobbled over, as if he were four times his age, stricken with arthritis, but now his back cracks and pops, as he stands straight up. Gasping once to fill his lungs and still unable to scream. "I grow tired of your mouth, Bobby Drake. As does everyone else who knows you."
Bobby cannot defend himself, and she enjoys it that way. Her eyes fall upon the doctor running from the building. "No doubt she wants to help you." She directs his eyes to Cecilia Reyes. "You, the one who got her into this mess in the first place. You can never leave well enough alone, can you?"
"Bobby!"
His body faces the doctor, who immediately stops in her tracks. The blood drained from her face, she stumbles over to vomit, but she never allows her eyes to leave the sight before her.
The broken, shattered ribs still attached to his body, the heart slowing its beating, still grasped inside Jean's fingers. Bobby Drake's eyes roll backward in his skull, still feeling every last ounce of pain, as Jean pulls her hand back through the channel her hand burrowed through his back and chest. Bobby's body falls limp, surprisingly still living for perhaps a moment, and Jean drops the poor X-Man's heart to the right of him, a sickening sound, as the fleshy organ is squashed under her foot.
Jean takes another look at Cecilia Reyes. "Just like all the women of his life. He dies just as he lived, broken hearted and helpless to do anything of it."
Crawling the several yards left, Cecilia hasn't the strength in her legs to stand and walk. Tears pouring from her eyes, her hands stained with the blood of Kitty Pryde, she holds Bobby's head in her lap, and she cries. "Cecilia Reyes, I never knew you had it in you."
Cecilia turns her head up, her tears turning to hatred the moment her eyes lock on woman. Rage builds up within a second, and any thought of her own self-preservation is thrown out the window. Cecilia Reyes leaps up and lunges out toward Jean Grey.
Mud splatters all around the two women; Cecilia is able to take Jean by surprise, tackling her to the ground. The doctor, sworn to heal the injured, pounds her fists into the perfect face of the woman so many of her colleagues revered. She screams words mixed in Spanish and English. None of them make any sense, and she doesn't care. She's all a ball of rage, and her force field shows it.
Shapes form from the glob of energy that surrounds her entire body. Spikes, blocks, and razor edges all tear at the other woman’s skin. Tired from the effort, the battered and bloody Jean gargles the small amount of air that comes into her lungs, as Cecilia closes her hands around her victims windpipe.
"¡Nunca lastimará cualquier persona! ¡Siempre!"
Cecilia pushes down hard on the woman's throat, and still an invisible force pushes away her thumbs. Her force field cannot help her, and, one by one, each of her fingers is broken. Despite it all, Cecilia doesn't scream; she stares into the soulless eyes of Jean Grey, refusing to give her the satisfaction. "A futile effort, as always," Jean says, quickly regaining her voice. “But, when it all comes down to it, you’re no X-Man.
"I never thought your force field would as formidable. I might not be able to hear what you're thinking, but your face is easily read," Jean speaks; raising her hand, it engulfs in flame at an instant. The flame settles into a recognizable form: a bird’s wing; she reaches back and sends the back of her enlarged arm into the injured doctor.
Fire rages outside Cecilia's protective field, her body ultimately saved from the flames. The rubble roof collapses, as the tumbling ball of mutant flesh falls through the few standing shingles; her last ditch effort, Cecilia rolls her body to the unconscious Kitty Pryde, extending her force field, absorbing the force of the crumbling roof.
Disappointment moves to consume Jean's face; there isn't a soul left to toy with in the entire town. The X-Men hadn't been a remote challenge, and the populace at large was simply an appetizer. She turns to leave the X-Men to die, to leave their bodies to rot in the humid air, when something pulls at her mind.
Ice cracks and crumbles beneath her feet; she nearly looses her footing. Jean takes to the air once again, only allowing herself to hover just above the ground. She looks down to what should be impossible.
She had removed it and stomped it into the ground only moments ago, but, on the ground beneath her, it began to rebuild...only frozen. Even the woman who likes to think of herself as The Phoenix stands horrified, almost sickened by the sight of it. "This is low, even for you," she says aloud.
Silence is all that the air can offer; not a single bird or insect dares make a sound near her presence or in the horizon for miles away. Jean hopes to hear a quip, a joke, or something to reveal Bobby Drake to be left alive; instead, she hears nothing.
"Charles!" Amelia Vogt shouts and rushes toward her compatriot, a seizure taking over him only moments before. His movements stop completely, his eyes glassed over and half rolled back into his head. After minutes of silence, he finally utters a single sentence, "Dear Lord, Jean, what have you done?"
"Toying with me?" Jean calls out; a small laugh follows the thought of it. “You cannot hope to win, I am eternal, and I am everything that you are not.”
“You’re right,” a disembodied voice calls out without any substance. The cold returns to the environment, no matter the effort Jean takes to consume it with heat once again.
Bitter cold bites at Jean’s skin, even beyond the flames that she commands. She looks on, as though she almost expects it. Tendrils of half-frozen water climb out of the gaping hole in Bobby’s chest. Rock hard formations of ice congeal in the exposed air, connecting to his exposed ribs, fusing the broken bones to one another, repairing the damage that a single blow had made to the fragile flesh.
The frost falls from the artificial bone, filling the hole the ribs had only braced open. His shape begins to take form, his body filling with a light snow, hardening as the process speeds, the exposed skin cooling and turning blue, as the cold touches it. Bobby’s body slowly hardens to a frozen block, his eyes open, and the frozen form sits up slowly, crossing his legs in an Indian style, sitting much like a kindergarten child in class. “Of course, I don’t go around killing my friends just because I’m a nut-job.”
He looks down at the chest that had only just finished filling itself. “I don’t think I’m going to ever get used to this crap happening," Bobby says, standing and coming only inches away from Jean’s face. “All the power in the world,” he says, taking a moment to look around and making sure to use enough dramatic flare to ensure Jean realizes it. “And, this is what you do with it?”
Jean doesn't reply. Her outstretched arms open, and fiery wings take her into flight with little more than a leap. Her head stretches to the sky, and she leaves the Iceman on the ground far below her. The fire under her control consumes the very clouds that had only begun to form.
"Running away?"
Jean licks her lips. "Now, do you understand why Xavier fears your ability, Bobby? Look at what you've become; I think I picked the wrong mate."
"Are you kidding?" He stands on a flat platform, a product of a raised column of ice. "Listen to yourself; you're drunk on yourself and your own delusion."
Searing heat flows from Jean's hands with lightning quickness, and the Iceman falls from his perch. "You're not the one to start handing out advice, Bobby Drake!"
"No, probably not," his voice speaks calmly from behind her.
"You can’t really think there is an excuse for any of this," a second voice sounds, no sooner than she can turn to face Bobby.
"It's going to eat you away inside," a third voice says. "You could have massacred your friends."
"The guilt of all the people you’ve killed. How many people in this town did you leave alive?" asks a fourth.
"And, for the love of God, look what you’ve done to the people who care about you the most!"
Five separate voices complain and complain in the same voice and in their own rhythm. Jean spins in circles, trying to face each one. The fire tries to strike at them, wings and talons all form, and they instantly die by the cold that grips at Jean's skin, goose bombs forming over the flesh, as the fires begin to die all around her.
"Get Away From Me!"
Jean screams, and the sky explodes in a brilliant firework show of yellow and orange. The red anger that breathed life into her rage leaves behind an aura of singed air and steam that was once five versions of the frozen form of Bobby Drake. "You weak, pathetic, whiny, insignificant man," she speaks through her excited breaths.
"An erratic heartbeat?" Bobby laughs, as Jean's feet touch the ground. "You were always easy to excite."
Her arms spring outward, fingers are spread outward, and fire juts out to consume the frozen form of the Iceman. He stumbles backward, as the onslaught begins, but it isn't long before he stands inside the fire, defiant.
His arms cross over his chest; the man of ice stands among the flames. Feeling his outer shell start to sweat, he simply adjusts the temperature within his body to compensate. Red hot anger flies from her fingertips, and the Iceman laughs it off by dropping the temperature even more.
Steam rises from the scorched earth, out from even the very air itself. Jean screams obscenities toward one of her oldest and most faithful friends from her teenage years, and the Iceman simply stands and takes every last bit of her effort.
"Are you finished yet?"
"Hardly," she says through the roar of the flame, and she clasps her hands together. The fire flows from her entire hand, consuming her arms and hands almost completely, utterly frustrated by the lack of effect her efforts have. "You're wasting your time. I'll eat you alive."
Iceman shrugs off her words. “I think Pyro said that to me once, but he was a chump; you’re supposed to be all high and mighty. Come and get me.”
The man of ice smiles and turns. Like a bat out of hell, he makes his getaway. Back to his old tricks, he slides into the air; his forward hand cools and freezes the air just ahead of him. Moisture and oxygen freeze with the simple pointing of his fingers and a thought; Iceman flies into the air. He arches his back forward and uses both hands to build his bridges faster, picking up speed, and laughs, as the fiery Phoenix flies after him.
Just far enough away from the X-Men, he stops and turns to face what every mutant on the planet fears.
“Far enough, Jean,” he whispers, mostly to himself. “We’ve lived through this crap for long enough.”
The mist rises and gathers around the flying bird of fire with the gorgeous woman at its center. He bows his head, gathering his strength with a slow, deep breath, and throws his arms forward. The bird of fire dies within an instant; the funnel of cold air makes impact with Jean Grey. The woman is mummified in a frozen block.
He collapses to his knees, the ice falling from his frame, and, incredibly tired, he stands up again, whole once more, as if nothing happened, his human body rebuilt by the mutant powers his father always feared would be the end of him. Bobby Drake faces down the fruit of his labor, the frozen brick that had once been Jean Grey. He groans, rolling his eyes, and looks up to the sky and asks, “why do you taunt me so?”
The outer shell drips, fissures cracking all throughout the surface, as the center of the sculpture becomes hotter than Bobby would like to see. His frame is completely frozen faster than he snaps his fingers, and Jean breaks free of her prison, leaping into the air, fire coursing over every inch of her body, as she tries to free herself of the cold.
“Oh, joy, here we go.”
“You cannot keep me locked away; you will not steal my freedom from me!” Jean’s screams fill the air much like the rage of her fire. "You’re afraid of your powers, and Xavier is afraid of your powers, too, Bobby. You're only insecure because he wants you to be; he's not the saint you think he is." She smiles. "Come with me, Bobby. Release your potential, and let’s show Xavier what fear really is...or you can doubt yourself. Live in fear with your power and end up frozen forever."
"That always frozen thing?” Bobby rolls his eyes. “Yeah, it sucks, but I'm over it. I dealt with it, like eight times. You're going to have to try a little harder, babe."
The twisted smile returns to her face, hardly recognizable as the once happy woman who had left her friends to birth and raise her child, free from the violence of the X-Men and their enemies. A sight Drake had never witnessed personally, a Jean Grey gone mad. She hovers a foot off the ground, looking down at the Iceman, as he reflects the mid-day sun. “If you insist.” Her voice isn’t familiar: a deepened tone, full of anger and rage, emotion ready to free itself at any opportunity it can find.
Her arms sprawl outward from her side, the firebird doing anything it can to beat back the cold, which the Iceman so easily maintains. Jean’s arms and legs ignite with the flames, the fire climbing her body, eating away at the red and gold clothing, an odd sight, as a sliver of green peers through for but only an instant until it too is consumed.
The soulless orbs of black, the once emerald eyes, give way to fiery gold almonds. There is no shape within her face any longer; the fire takes it all away. “No, Jean!” The Iceman cries out, rushing toward her, his hands tossing out waves of cold air at her, but the effort is of no use; the heat eats the cold, growing only stronger to beat it away.
The fun and games, the attempt to tire her out, have worn thin. Before his very eyes, the fire began to eat at her. Charred and burnt flesh from her arms and legs is the first to go; she does not cry out in pain. Laughter, instead, takes precedence, taunting the frozen man in his attempts the kill the flame. A charcoal ash soon falls from the dancing flames, but there is no flesh left to eat.
Minutes pass by, and the Iceman is able to destroy the heated air with his own ability. There is only ash left behind, not an ounce of flesh, neither a laugh nor cry. Jean Grey-Summers has consumed herself within the fires that she commanded. “Scott was right.” A half-frozen, half-flesh Iceman says, as he falls to his knees just next to the pile left behind.
A small gust of wind carries away part of the ashes of his cremated friend. “This was no Phoenix.”
