“Sunfire, Havok now entering combat.” Instead of having everybody troop back to the door, Storm had the team meet on a rooftop that was near the center of the map, it was the highest building for this part of the city. “It’s time to switch things up. We’re going to patrol to a block out with this building as home base. That should make Nico have come to us since there’s not a lot of time left until the free for all. Colossus, Havok, and Jubilee will patrol while Sunfire covers you with air support. I’ll be the eye in the sky and rapid response.” The group gave their confirmations then Jubilee spoke up. “I don’t know if this will help or not but for the last few weeks Nico’s been studying everything he could find on ninjas.” Havok smirked. “Well, that would explain things. We couldn’t see much of what was happening on the monitors but even still we should have seen some idea of how he got the drop on the rest.” Storm took to the skies. “Let’s move out and keep your eyes open for anything, an out of the box thinking ninja could be anywhere.”

Well, this sucks!! There they are all nicely clumped together and there’s no way to take them all at the same time. I don’t think a sneak attack would work again so soon. What to do, what to do? How bout I … No, what if I…. Well that might work but I’m not sure if I can pull it off. What the hell I’ll give it shot anyway. The problem with the direct approach is numbers, they outnumber me so I’m thinking if I can make a lot of little golems, I can make up the difference or at least cause enough of a distraction to take some of them out. Seeing as how 4 of them can just blast anything away I think something small and numerous like insects are the way to go. Only problem with that is control. I don’t think I’ll be able to control all of them and still be aware of my surroundings enough to fight at the same time. Screw it I can always jump back into the sewers and just run when it goes horribly wrong. The whole point test was just to see how good I am under pressure anyway.

Once I got their patrol pattern down, I picked an ambush spot on the route farthest from Storm and out of her line of sight. Then I got started on making hundreds of flying bugs. Even though I didn’t think they would be dumb enough to blast each other to get rid of them, I still made them out of fire this way they couldn’t just raze their body temps and trying to melt the bugs off would take forever if it even worked. The bugs couldn’t actually attack but enough of them crawling on you and in your face will definitely distract you. Hopefully long enough for me to take some of them out hard and fast. I staged the ones for Sunfire on top of a building’s A/C. The rest were spread out in clumps across the whole street, under mailboxes and cars. Some even above trash cans.

“How long you think he’s going to keep hiding?” Havok asked the group. They were walking down the middle of the street which was not at all congested. I think that was Jean’s doing in the control booth. She rerouted traffic on their patrol route and moved most of the civilians out of the area. “Comrade Nico is fighter at heart. I expect an attack at any minute.” “The big buy has a point Nico is at his most dangerous when he’s quiet.” Jubilee responded as she brushed a bug out of her face. “I know but this is killing me, how long is he going to wait? There’s not much time left until the free for all.” Havok to swiped at a bug. In fact, all of them had increasingly been fanning at bugs. Jubilee stopped and was waving furiously now. “Where did all these bugs come from.”

That was my queue. I released all the bugs to swarm. If I wasn’t so busy trying to win, I would have been rolling on the ground laughing. They all looked so ridiculous, Colossus was actually slapping his own face trying to smash the bugs. My first attack was a flying taser kick to Jubilee’s back that put her down. (I didn’t want a long drawn out fight against one of my best friends.) The spinning side kick to Havok was an epic fail. He was still aware enough to dodge and fire off a blast at me. I was able to dodge that but not the blind side punch from Colossus that lunch me into a car. I am soooooo glad I practice my shields to be automatic or else I’d need a hospital about now. I sat up, shook my head and took stock. Sunfire was flying in tight circles to burn the trailing bugs that couldn’t keep up with him. Havok was roasting Colossus while he had his eyes closed which had little effect. And there was a Storm on the way!! (Ha Ha.) I went to deal with Colossus first because I didn’t want to feel another hit like that. I went four cars up the street from the one I crashed into, picked it up with my Tk change its magnetic field to magnetize it and launched it as fast as I could at Colossus. It was his turn to by blindsided. The car leveled him and he made sparks as he was drugged down the street. When he finally stopped, he realized that he couldn’t lift the car off of him no matter how hard he tried. Which was only made worse when the other three magnetized cars hit him. Even if he woke up, he wouldn’t be able to move and if he switched back to human skin, he’d be crushed so he was out now too.

I had sent all the remaining bugs to attack Sunfire and Havok while I was dealing with Colossus so when I checked back in, I saw they were frying each other trying to get rid of the bugs but weren’t having a lot of luck. My little fire bugs were absorbing their fire/heat to keep themselves going. I didn’t know they could do that but boy am I glad they can. Things were looking up so of course, that was when the tornado hit me. Storm dropped one right on top of Sunfire and Havok which had the dual results of sucking up all my bugs and turning it into a fire tornado. The edge of which picked me up and threw me into a building, hard and fast. That was another thing that looks cool on tv but hurts like hell in real life. (DBZ) I got my crap together and jumped out the hole in the wall to immediately blast Havok with a TerK (Terakinesis) shotgun blast. Then grabbed Sunfire with TK and threw him into the building across the street. Before Havok could recover I picked him up too and did a mini berserker barrage. Just enough to knock him out. I didn’t even get to turn around before Storm lit me up with the quickest lighting strike I ever saw. It hit me before my shield could come up so I had to deal with the full force for a few secs. Just as I was getting ready to redirect the rest back at her, Sunfire started to roast me with his fire blast. I needed to get out of there and heal, so I grabbed an SUV to use as a shield for Sunfire and sent the remaining built up charge to the gas tank. I don’t know why but the explosion was bigger than it should have been and caught them off guard and gave me enough time to escape back into the sewers.

Sunfire picked himself up and looked over at Storm who was still a little dazed. “How is he doing all this?” Storm laughed. “My little brother is very smart and very powerful but the thing that should really scare you is that he is nowhere near his final limit.” Sunfire’s black skin actually paled to grey a little as he thought about it. “Psylocke, Beast, Angel now entering combat.” “Well he’s screwed now there about 30 mins until the free for all and there’s still 11 of us to go.” “See you’re underestimating him again. He may not actually win the whole but I’m sure he’ll take some of us with him when he goes.” Nightcrawler popped back in to finish taking out the downed X-men. “Jean started streaming this to the rest of the school and they are going crazy, they want to make this a monthly thing that anyone can try.” Storm shook her head. “Come on Sunfire let’s head back towards the door I have another plan that should work.”

That lighting strike ended up giving me a bunch of tiny little spots, like cigarette burns and my clothes were crispy now. Nothing a healing trance couldn’t cure but it would take time, and that was something I was running out of. I was starting to doubt myself and whether I could pull this off. So far most of my takedowns have been cheap shots. Screw it! I was doing good just to get where I’m at. Let’s just heal up and go at them straight up because it would take a miracle to beat them all the way I’ve been doing it.

It was the announcement of Polaris entering combat that woke me out of my healing trance. The free for all had begun and now I only had 10 mins to find the team before the next person entered. Well at least I was feeling a lot better and now had a better grasp on how to use my powers in real combat. After climbing out of the sewers, I turn off gravity for me and used Tk to push me around, it was my preferred way of flying for now. I found them 6 mins later in a park that they somehow managed to turn into a crude earthen fort. Pity, I was about to show them why they shouldn’t have bothered. I flew a hundred feet above them, turned on my shields and increased my gravity to 2x earth’s and dived. While falling I focused my TerK for a massive earth shock and spike attack. They saw me coming in and started taking pot shots at me but so far, my shield was able to handle Storm’s lighting, Sunfire’s fire, and Polaris’s metal spikes. When I landed or crashed really it looked just like a fat kid doing a cannonball in a pool. The earth rippled out from me in big waves and tore down their defenses while they got tossed around. Before they could recover from that a bunch of bunt, earth spikes launched at them for extra damage. Unfortunately, the earth wave had no effect on Storm and Angel and they were able to dodge the spikes.

Storm waved her hand a big gust of wind blew away the dust cloud that was covering my crater. As soon as he could see me Angel dived down at me with a double dropkick. He was really fast but I expected something like that so caught him with Tk and slammed him hard into the ground like Hulk did Loki. (Bet you didn’t know he’s another one with healing powers huh? Yeah, his blood can raise the dead, although he hasn’t got to that point yet in this universe.) Next, I wanted to see if I could pick off any of the others that were laying around, but before I could I heard this. “Iceman now entering combat.”

“Frack!!” Beast was the first to recover mainly because he was able to dodge the majority of the earth spikes. So, I picked him up and threw him at Storm again but this time she was ready so she caught him with wind and sent him back at me. Since it looked like he was having fun being a human tennis ball I spiked him at Psylocke who was trying to sneak up on me, and they went tumbling away. Polaris shot metal spikes at me which I stopped, and we began a little tug of war with them. Sunfire jumped backed into the fight with a fire blast and I threw up a shield to handle it. Storm did another lighting strike so I messed with the metal spikes polarity to draw the lighting in. (We really got to work on getting her some new offensive moves.) We were in a kind of stalemate but I saw Beast helping Angel to get back on his feet which meant Psylocke was out there somewhere. “Alright let’s clear the field!” I reshaped my shield to redirect Sunfire’s fire at Polaris. While she was distracted, I took full control over the spikes and sent them at Storm. Sunfire had a horrified look on his face as I grab him and slung him towards me. (I don’t know why he had that look, we worked hard to make sure she has shields too.) When he finally started paying attention to me, he was met with a 100 lbs. gravity and Tk reinforced right cross that put him to sleep. Meanwhile, Storm, who manage to blow most of the spikes away, and Polaris who also recovered were closing in. I charged toward Storm since she was finally on the ground for once and a pain in the butt, but I only got a couple of steps before an ice beam hit me from the back and started to rapid freeze me.

Iceman had shown up to the party, Great!! While I still had some movement left, I released the biggest laser I could make and tried to split him straight down the middle. He was able to block most of it but it still knocked off his ice slide and fell hard to the ground. Meanwhile, Psylocke finally snuck up on me and went to town with her psi daggers. My shields dealt with her and I reinforced them but was still mostly frozen so I couldn’t move much. Polaris decided that wasn’t enough so she decided to increase my gravity as much as she could which brought me down to my knees. Storm saw that Psylocke wasn’t doing much damage so she ordered her off and created a localized tornado to suck away my air and knock me out. I’m not going to lie things were looking bad and I was hurting all over. Beast had declared Angel to hurt to continue so he was free to come back to the fight along with the next combatant and Iceman was getting back on his feet too. I was having trouble breathing and couldn’t focus long enough to do something about it. I just wanted to give up and call it a day. I mean I think I did a pretty good job considering, how many other people can claim to have taken out 11 of the X-men at one time. Just as I was about to give up and tap out, everything seemed to stop and I was yanked into my mind palace.