Iceman

It was a little early in the year for snow, but he above of all people wasn't one to mind. Seeing snow build up in thin patches on the streets and sidewalks was a definite reminder that winter was on it's way, and he couldn't help but remember the better times in his life.

"Alright, that's it," his driver finally said and she pressed a button on the armrest between them. The passenger's side window, which Bobby's head rested on, slid down quickly with a low hum.

Bobby jerked his head upright, startled by the sudden action. He looked towards the Latino woman, narrowing his eyes grumpily onto her.

"Y'know the number one killer in the world is people playing with buttons they don't know what do..." he said as he indiscreetly reached towards the armrest and pressed down on the button that raised the window back up.

"I'm sure..." Candy muttered as she looked back on the road ahead of them. Bobby resituated himself against the car door.

"I'm serious. Just look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki back in good ol' WWII," Bobby muttered sarcastically as he propped his chin up on his fist and stared back out the passenger side window.

He knew exactly what it was she wanted to say, about how he had been down in the dumps for the last two weeks over reasons he wouldn't say, but he wasn't about to let her voice concern or even bring it up.

"That is a sick thing of you to say, Bobby Drake," Candy replied, squinting her eyes out of disgust at her coworker.

"Well, do you really think the US was retaliating against a super power?" Bobby looked back at her way, shaking his head at her. "No way. When one of our planes was going to deliver them their copy of our Declaration of Forfeit, one of the pilots hit a button out of curiosity and hey-ey..."

Candy rolled her eyes at his attempt at humor and tried her best to ignore him until he was done. She couldn't help but notice that the snow was beginning to come down harder and faster against her car's windshield.

"Of course, that could make me a hypocrite in my point, seeing as how that little button incident did further the Allies' cause..." Bobby trailed off, shrugging his head to the side
and looking back out the window.

"Well, then you might as well consider this a situation much like that," Candy retorted as she glanced a stern look his way, then back to the road. "You being depressed just because your girlfriend doesn't want anything to do with you, but was just too nice to say so, has gotten old fast."

Bobby heaved a sigh through his nostrils and steadied his gaze out the car window, completely ignorant to the snowstorm outside of the vehicle. "It's not just that, Candy..."

"Then what the hell is it?" Candy asked as she firmly held her hands on the wheel of the car, becoming irritated not only by Bobby's difficult attitude, but also by the sudden difficulty in controlling her car on the now icy streets.

Bobby sat up again and looked skeptically around the environment outside of the car, growing more alert as the wheels under the car began losing their grip on the street. "Well if you can learn how to drive for a moment, then I might just tell you."

"It's not my fault, damn it," She replied, struggling to keep her eyes on the road and pay attention to him as the car began to swerve violently into the other lane on the deserted city street. "This snow storm like, just came out of no where..."

Candy shot a look to Bobby, who returned it with equal concern. When they both looked back to the icy road ahead, the head lights of the car revealed a glimpse of a man standing there in the snow, looking at them head on with what appeared through the snow as glowing red eyes.

"WATCH OUT!" Bobby shouted as he forced himself back into the seat of the car and gripped hold of the car's interiors.

"Holy shi -- !" Candy started to say as she pounded her foot on the break and flung herself back into her seat.

Bobby dived across the cab of the car and pulled on the wheel out of pure impulse, forcing a horrible screech from the wheels of the car as it twisted violently on the icy road and out of the way of the figure.

Cecilia Reyes drew a hand to her chin thoughtfully, staring out into the early morning's skyline from the infirmary room that held the two patients brought into Brooklyn General weeks ago after their interference in a gang war.

Apparently Maxwell Markham and Martin Blank both saved innocent bystanders, but at a cost. They were both comatose and still badly injured, not expected to awake. But that was only a small piece of the puzzle to her.

"So he just gave this to you and walked out?" She asked, dropping her hand down from her chin and looking down from the lights outside the window and to a white card in her hand.

"Yeah," the other doctor, a middle aged male with a receding and graying hairline, confirmed with a nod to her before looking back down to the chart in his hand. "Looked pretty down and out about life, too."

He put the chart back onto one of the bed's of the two comatose patients and looked towards the Puerto Rican woman, putting his pen away. Cecilia looked up through her round glasses to meet his eyes. "Mean anything to you?"

"Not really," she shrugged her shoulders and walked away from the window towards him, still holding onto the business card. "It's a pub in Salem Center. I used to know some friends who went there a lot before I came to work here."

"Hmh," the male doctor shrugged.

"Mind if I hang onto this?" Cecilia asked, holding up the card to his eye level.

"Sure, it's all yours."

"Thanks," Cecilia said as she tucked the card away into her breast pocket, walking up beside the other doctor as he started to leave the room out into the halls of the hospital. "So any idea what's to happen with those two?"

"Police are coming to ID them later in the day," He replied, stretching his arms out with a tired yawn. "Sorry if I wasn't very helpful. I need to make some more rounds before I'm off for the day. I'll see you around Reyes."

"Bye Doctor Jehnson," She nodded before they both turned their own ways. After a few steps, she stopped and reached into her pocket, pulling out the white business card with gold lettering and looking down at it.

Not long ago, Cecilia Reyes would have wanted nothing to do with super heroes or former team mates. But for some reason she couldn't help but wonder what Bobby had to do with all of this.

Better to just forget about it... she thought quietly to herself with a snort, before dropping the card into a waste bin and continuing on her way. This may be the last new lease on life I'll ever get, and there's no reason to screw it all up.

With a groan, Bobby lifted his head up from the dash board of the car and looked out the windshield to see through the pounding snow the light post they had crashed into as he raised a hand to the knot forming on the side of his forehead.

It must have been too early in the morning for anyone to have noticed there was an accident, being that there wasn't a soul around or any sirens in the distance.

"Did I ever thank you for the rides to and from work this last month or so, Candy?"

There was no response.

"Candy?" He asked again, turning his attention towards the owner of the car.

She was laying against the wheel of the car, unconscious from the sudden impact with the light post. Bobby ignored the pain behind his head injury and leaned over to check on her, seeing blood dripping out from her nose.

"Aww cripes..." He muttered as he lifted her body back from the wheel to get a better look at her injuries. Remaining calm, he started gently patting his hand against her cheek. "Candy, wake up, babe. You're scaring me here."

"Unghh..." Bobby heard her moan lowly. After a moment she began to stir and her eyes fluttered back to consciousness. "Bobby...?"

Relieved, he smiled down at her. "Yeah?"

"You made us wreck you pequeña perra..." She muttered, rolling her head to the side and looking to him. Bobby couldn't help but chuckle at the tone in her voice, and Candy used all the strength in her right arm to push him back. "I'm okay, you can get off of me."

Bobby let himself fall back into the passenger's seat from her shove. Sighing in another moment of relief, he looked outside the windows surrounding the frame of the car to the quiet, snow filled streets outside. "Hey, where'd that guy go?"

The sound of glass shattering erupted behind Bobby before Candy could respond, causing the former X-Man jerked forward.

"Bobby!" Candy shouted as two large hands attached to a pair of thick arms appeared through the open space where the car door window once was and grasped Bobby by his shoulders.

His struggling was to no avail, and in moments he had been pulled through the shattered glass and outside of the car, and in the heavy snow outside. Candy moved from her seat and tried to reach for Bobby, but her injuries kept her from moving fast.

Bobby iced up his hands as the large figure twisted him around, pressing him up against the top of the car and holding him by the neck. He gagged by the pressure being applied to his throat, and even as he pounded and beat away the man's arms, he was able to finally get a look at his attacker.

The goliath was a middle aged man with a mop of brown hair in brown slacks and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His eyes were glowing a dense red and his teeth were stained yellow.

It didn't take long for Bobby to recognize him.

"Jack?!" He stopped fighting against the man's large arms and studied his build, then looked back up to his glowing red eyes and aged face. "What are you -- have you been working out?"

Jack was always kind of a big guy back when he used to come into Harry's, but now he was monstrous in comparison to the average man. Jack cleared his throat and Bobby could see a look of remorse even through his glowing red eyes.

"Sorry Bobb-o," He said as he squeezed the younger and smaller man's neck tighter, and leaned into him. "This isn't personal or anything."

A swirling aura of blue light slowly seeped through the space where Jack's large hands and Bobby's neck met. He gasped from the pressure against his throat, feeling an emptiness begin to swell in the pit of his stomach and suddenly, he was scared madly for his life.

"ARGH!" Bobby shouted at the top of his lungs as he pressed his hands against Jack's face. The open air between his palms and the goliath's face exploded with a powerful beam of ice, forcing Jack backwards through a store's display window.

Free from his attacker's grasp, Bobby rolled onto his side from atop the car, closing his eyes tiredly and gasping for air. He could hear the faint sound of alarms, and when he opened his eyes again he saw Jack rising from inside the store.

"Bobby!" Candy asked in a shout from the other side of the car. During the struggle, she had managed to climb out. Whether or not she saw him use his powers, he couldn't tell. "Are you okay?"

"Never better..." Bobby groaned, keeping his eye on Jack as he sat up. Any remorse the man might have had before Bobby's assault seemed to vanish as layers of frost began forming around his bulk. "Candy, take my word for it, and get the frosty hell out of here."

"I don't think you have to tell me twice," Candy said as she began backpedalling away from the scene on Bobby's command after seeing what Jack had become, soon turning around fully and taking off into a run.

"Good girl," Bobby muttered with a painful grunt as he let himself slip down from the top of the car, ice flowed upwards from his feet and spreading over the rest of his body. "Find the National Guard and tell them to bring a tank while you're out..."

When Bobby looked back to the situation at hand, he saw Jack's towering form in front of him.

"Uhh, I know this is probably a bad time to be asking, Jack..." His sentence was cut short as Jack sent a fist towards his head with the force of a battering ram behind it.

Before Jack's large fist could connect with his small frame, Bobby went limp and dropped to the snow covered street. Jack's fist instead crashed into the side of Candy's car and sent it reeling back out into the street.

Bobby shuffled up to his feet and away from Jack before the monstrosity of bulk and ice had the chance to attack him when he was down, continuing to ask as he did so. "But what in the hell were you doing and/or are still planning on doing to me?"

"Snowstorm," he muttered coldly in response as he turned towards Bobby, cracking his large knuckles against each other.

Rings of ice exploded from Bobby's wrists as he generated a sled of ice to his right, preparing to move away from Jack again at a moment's notice.

"Yeah, I can tell," Bobby said sarcastically as he gestured around the frost covered city and the blaze of snow falling from the sky.

"I'm Snowstorm, Bobby," Jack said as he stood there frozen, staring at Bobby from behind the dense and glowing red energy that cackled in front of his eyes. "And he wants to add your powers to mine."

"The Prince of Valhalla..." Bobby said under his breath, his jaw dropping as he remembered months back to the Sentinel attack outside of town.

"Like I said..." Snowstorm said as he began stepping towards Bobby, towering over the former X-Man. "This isn't at all personal, but I'll do anything to be with my family again."