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Chapters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
 
 
 

Thick as Thieves - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Valerie Jones and Lori McDonald
Last updated: 01/02/2007 02:01:11 AM

Chapter 21

Time froze. Bobby stared at Michael in mute horror. He was suddenly very aware of Diedre's hand clasped in his own, and even as that endless second ticked by, he knew that there was no way for Michael to mistake what was happening between them. He saw the understanding flicker in Michael's eyes, and then the moment shattered as Michael's lips curved in a cold smile.

"It was you." Bobby could almost see the pieces falling into place in his mind.

Unconsciously, Bobby drew Diedre behind himself, shielding her. He raised his chin slightly and said nothing. There was no defense, and he doubted very seriously his ability to bluff his way out of the situation. His nerves screamed at him to react--to go ice, to attack, to run--anything but to simply stand there. But Remy had trained him mercilessly until he really understood it, that his mind was his first weapon. He didn't know anything about Michael's powers. He really needed to see what the other mutant could do before he reacted.

Michael's smile had not changed. "And here I thought Remy was being unusually discrete."

Several things came together in Bobby's mind. Michael had known--or at least suspected--that Diedre was involved with someone and he hadn't done anything. Why? Because he thought it was Gambit. Which meant that he had been waiting for an opportune time to expose the affair. And that would have been all the excuse he needed to kill Remy. As a Guildmember, even Bobby couldn't have done anything to stop him.

Bobby's mind was whirling, but he felt like he'd latched on to something to use against Michael in this deadly game. "No," he answered Michael, "Remy doesn't even know." He tightened his grip on Diedre's hand. Ignorance and innocence were equivalent under Guild law. Remy had risked his life as well as his reputation in bringing Bobby into the thieves world. The least Bobby could do was protect him from the one risk he actually hadn't known about.

"Noble." Michael cocked his head. "But not very useful." Bobby tensed as the other man reached into his coat, but all he retrieved was a cellular phone. "Perhaps I should simply ask him what he knows." He began to dial a number into the phone.

Bobby reacted almost instantly as the chain of logic fell into place in his head. An icy tentacle reached out and knocked the phone from Michael's hand. It hit the hardwood floor with a thud and skidded across the room. Bobby stared at Michael, heart pounding. There was no way Remy would stand by and let Michael kill him, Guild law or no. Not when it was solely a matter of political maneuvering. He knew Remy that well now. But even if Remy defeated Michael, he would be guilty of breaking Guild law and the Guild would crucify him for it. The only way to protect Remy was to keep him out of it entirely. But that meant that Bobby was on his own against a man that even Gambit walked very carefully around.

Michael's eyes narrowed to slits. "Very well. You and the slut can die together. I'll just have to wait until later to deal with Remy."

Bobby transitioned to his ice form as something dark but translucent took shape around Michael. It reminded Bobby of a psionic exoskeleton, save that it resembled a spider rather than a man. The long legs were folded tightly around Michael, but Bobby estimated that they would have at least an eight foot reach. In the confines of the foyer, that eliminated every avenue of escape except to retreat back into the hall, which would be suicidal.

Concentrating, Bobby drew moisture from the air in a rush. Walls of ice exploded from the ground all around him, encasing himself and Diedre in a fortress of ice. He saw little opportunity except to stand his ground and try to draw Michael out. A small part of his brain whispered that he ought to just freeze Michael where he stood, but even becoming a thief hadn't turned Bobby into a killer. He was more powerful than Michael probably suspected, and that, along with some of his X-Men experience and a great heaping dollop of luck, might get them through this unharmed.

One of the spidery legs flashed toward Bobby. The extended tip gained opacity as it neared, becoming a dark, smoky color. It struck the outer ice shield with a dull scraping sound, scattering ice chips in a small shower. It was an exploratory strike, Bobby knew, and gave him little idea of what Michael could really do. But it did give him some insight into what type of attack to expect. He didn't see any signs of telepathic, telekinetic, or other kinds of manipulatory powers. Michael appeared to have a purely physical mutation.

*Which means that if I can buy myself some distance, I can probably get a little time to think.* Twin columns rose from the top of the ice fortress, their tops jagged.

"Hang on," he told Diedre, who only tightened her grip on him. He didn't dare turn to look at her. Under his direction, the ice pylons slammed into the ceiling.

Bobby had intended to rip a hole straight through to the roof, but the structure above them shuddered under his assault and held. Pieces of plaster rained down from the ceiling as Michael grinned.

"Reinforced steel and concrete." He lashed out with one of his skeletal arms, this time gouging a deep trench in the ice that surrounded Bobby and Diedre. "Even a bomb blast won't go through that."

Bobby glanced around in dismay. *Whole penthouse is the same, no doubt, which means I'll have to use one of the doors. Or windows. And even those'll be reinforced.* Experimentally, Bobby created a flight of ice arrows and sent them shooting toward Michael. He was not surprised when they shattered against the exoskeleton, which darkened dramatically in the area where they struck.

Michael drew back on of the spidery legs to strike, then paused as Diedre ducked around Bobby. "Michael! Stop this!" Her voice was pleading rather than commanding as she held her arms out toward him. "Please! You don't love me. Just let me go."

Bobby held his breath, momentarily forgotten as the two stared at each other. "I don't think so, Didi," Michael told her, his tone reproving. "After all the effort I put into you, all the gifts I gave you. . . and you couldn't even reel me in the right fish."

Bobby's heart went cold. Was that all she'd ever been to Michael? A tool aimed directly at bringing Remy down? He was so stunned by the other man's cruelty that for a split second he didn't register the translucent leg that shot toward Diedre, its tip darkening to an inky black. But then adrenaline poured through him as he grabbed Diedre and swung her bodily around, placing himself between her and the attack. He heard the sound of cracking ice as the heavy barriers he'd erected collapsed, but before he could build new ones, he felt the skeletal arm slam into him from behind. He staggered as Diedre screamed, and he looked down in horror to see the black tip of Michael's exoskeleton emerging from his own shattered chest to impale Diedre just above the left breast. She went limp in his arms, her blood welling from the wound in a dark torrent as Michael pulled back.

"Noooooooo!" The temperature plummeted as Bobby turned to face Michael. He held Diedre cradled against him, her blood freezing as it touched his icy skin. Without further thought, he sent a wave of ice crashing toward her killer.

Remy paused in the act of lighting a cigarette as the air around him turned suddenly chill. He was seated on one of the many benches that lined the street outside Michael's apartment building, waiting for the man to emerge. It had seemed wise to keep an eye on the Guildmaster until the F.B.I caught up with him, but as a woman walking past suddenly shivered and glanced around in surprise, he found every danger sense he possessed coming alive.

Remy came to his feet, eyes scanning the street for signs of trouble. The temperature drop felt an awful lot like Iceman's handiwork, but he didn't see any sign of the young mutant.

*Please tell me dis ain' some kind o' random mutant t'ing,* he muttered silently. *I don' have time f' X-Men t'ings right now.*

Up and down the street, everything seemed normal. Remy raised his eyes, scanning the buildings. He turned a full circle, wishing that the crowds moving on the street didn't play such havoc with his kinesthetic sense. Then the sound of shattering glass brought his attention back to Michael's apartment building. One of the windows in the penthouse exploded outward, the shards of glass falling in a sparkling shower in the sunlight. But it was the jagged wave of ice that poured from the broken window that robbed Remy of breath.

*Bobby, y' idiot!* Remy raced across the street, drawing cards as he went.

The ice wave bowled Michael over, carrying him along as it crashed through the wall of the foyer and into the formal dining room beyond. Under Bobby's direction, it slammed into the far wall with enough force to make the entire building shudder. The picture window that overlooked the New York skyline shattered, though the reinforced steel frame only bent under the onslaught. Michael seemed unaffected. The exoskeleton was nearly black around him, and it expanded sharply, cracking the ice that engulfed him. He pulled himself out of the ice with those spider-like arms and began to advance on Bobby.

Bobby saw him coming, but couldn't move. His attention was fixed on the pale face of the woman in his arms. She was still alive, though barely, her breath bubbling weakly through her pink lips. >From the amount of blood, Bobby could only guess that Michael had hit her heart. The dark red stain covered her yellow dress, once again clothing her in Michael's awful colors.

"Shhh. It's all right. You're going to be all right," he whispered to her through the tears that froze on his cheeks. His mind was a whirlwind of horror and rage, and the pain in his chest had nothing to do with the gaping hole in his ice body. He could barely breathe he was so terrified-not of Michael, but at the knowledge that he was watching the woman he loved die.

Michael came closer, the spider legs assisting him as he walked across the uneven floor of ice. Bobby looked up at him, his agony becoming cold, hard rage. His eyes narrowed as the local temperature plummeted. Not just to zero or a little below, as had once been the limit of his abilities. In less than a second, the air immediately surrounding them liquefied as the temperature dropped below the vaporization threshold. The liquid air splashed down around them, coating all three mutants, and spilling out across the floor into the warm air beyond the boundary of Bobby's control. The rapid re-expansion of the liquid oxygen and nitrogen resulted in an explosion of gases that shattered the quick-frozen floor. Michael disappeared in a cloud of vapors, plummeting down into the level below.

Bobby held himself and Diedre up on a shelf of ice. Her delicate features were now coated in a thin film of ice, her blood turned to ruby crystals where it trailed down the length of her arm to dangle like gems from her fingertips.

Bobby's breath caught in his throat. The sudden freezing hadn't killed her. Instead, it had awakened her powers. He could feel her mutant power, so much like his own. It brushed feather-soft across his mind as another force extended itself into the ice, searching for anchorage.

*That's it!* Elation swept through him. "Diedre, that's it! Go into the ice! You can do it, my love." He closed his eyes, listening with his mutant power for the tendrils of her power that sank themselves into the surrounding ice. Bobby followed her with his senses, searching for any way to help her. Her body was frozen, the blood that remained in her veins trapped there by the cold. Her powers protected her--keeping her alive even as her body became something that did not live in the conventional sense. Bobby knew that transition intimately. Every time he went ice he traded his physical life--that sustained by the function of a living organism-- for a life sustained entirely by his mutant powers. Diedre couldn't become ice. Her powers just weren't that strong. But so long as she remained in the cocoon of bitter cold that Bobby had created, she would continue to live in a kind of altered state. And that was enough to make Bobby's heart soar.

"Bobby! Bobby! Are y' o.k.?"

Remy's voice, desperately worried, startled Bobby out of his reflection. He looked up to see the Cajun thief crouched at the edge of the sphere of cold, his bo staff in one hand and a set of cards splayed in the other.

"What happened?" he demanded as soon as Bobby raised his head. "Where's Michael?"

"Down there." Bobby nodded toward the gaping hole in the floor, surprised by how calm his voice sounded. "I killed him."

Remy arched an eyebrow at the pronouncement, but the worry in his eyes was fading. "Couldn' a happened t' a nicer guy." His gaze dropped to Diedre. "Is she--?"

"No." Bobby didn't know whether to be pleased or insulted that Remy didn't show the least bit of surprise that he was holding the Guildmaster's wife cradled in his arms. "She's in a kind of suspended animation. I've dropped the temperature far enough that it's boosting her powers."

The rippling edge of the cold sphere was only a few inches from the end of Remy's nose. He frowned, studying it. "How cold?" He seemed oddly analytical, and a prickling sense of warning began to crawl across the back of Bobby's neck.

"The air's liquid, if that tells you anything." Remy's gaze snapped to his at the sharp comment, and Bobby knew for certain that something was wrong.

Remy gave the sphere another, more respectful, inspection and shifted slightly away. "Can y' do anyt'ing else while y' maintainin' dat t'ing?"

Bobby shook his head slowly. The intense concentration required to keep the temperature that low, combined with not freezing the rest of the building and all of the innocent people currently in it, was already beginning to take its toll.

Remy sighed and rose to his feet. "Dat's too bad." His voice, and his expression, were grim.

Bobby was about to ask him why when he saw a long black leg rise out of the hole in the floor, followed quickly by another. His stomach twisted savagely. "But--" He looked up at Remy. "I poured liquid air on him! He couldn't have survive that!"

Remy moved away from Bobby, his attention focused on the multiple legs now scrabbling for purchase on the jagged edge of the penthouse floor. "I've heard say dat not'ing can get t'rough Michael's exoskeleton, if he don' wan' it to." The cards in his hand flared to life, becoming brilliant streaks of fire as he threw.

"Guess we gon' find out."

 

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