"Bobby, look out!"

Iceman casually pointed one of his fists to his left and- without turning his head- discharged an ice blast, freezing an attacking Omega Red in his place.

"No need," Iceman smirked at Jubilee, winking.

"That wasn't what I—" Jubilee began, though she decided it wasn't worth it when Legion, in his Bart form, punched Iceman in the back of his head, sending the ice-coated teenager down to the ground with a grunt.

"Wonderful," Jubilee grumbled, slipping down her large tinted goggles and conjuring up a sudden flash of "fireworks" just as Legion glanced at her, temporarily blinding the enemy Mutant.

Legion/Bart cursed and covered his eyes, taking a step back.

"Sunspot, could use some help over here!" Jubilee yelled.

"Yeah yeah, I'm coming," Sunspot sighed as he leapt in front of Jubilee in his powered-up form, running up to and kneeing Bart in the stomach hard.

"Hey, w-wait a minute!" Sunspot exclaimed as Bart merely took the blow in stride and picked up Sunspot with both of his arms, flinging the X-Man out of the way.

Suddenly a huge icicle erupted out of the floor below Bart, piercing the Mutant up through his body as the icicle grew longer, thicker, and sharper, eventually pinning him up against the Danger Room's ceiling.

"THAT'S for attacking me from behind!" Iceman said, rubbing the back of his head as he stood back up and looked upward at a struggling Legion.

"Overdoing it much?" Jubilee said, running over to Iceman.

"Hey, only my crispy ice coating kept me from being declared out of the sim," Iceman said, turning around as cracks began to run through the ice surrounding Omega Red.

"Considering how far that guy's tentacles can extend, I don't think blinding him will do much good," Iceman gulped, stepping back.

"What am I, chopped liver?" Husk said, running over to them from the other side of the Danger Room and readying an acidic hand as Omega Red broke free of his icy prison with a yell.

"Where were you when Legion was behind me?" Iceman exclaimed.

"Um, taking care of Magneto?" Husk said as she placed her hand on Omega's shoulder, causing him to cry out in pain.

With their focus now momentarily off the enemy in front of them, Iceman and Jubilee looked at the far side of the Danger Room to see Magneto clutching his head, Moonstar obviously shutting the robot duplicate down with her powers. Magneto's helmet lay next to him, partially liquified from the same acid Husk was now liberally applying to Omega Red's arm.

Crying out, Omega Red let his tentacles shoot out of hands, both of them wrapping around Husk and lifting her into the air.

"Don't worry, this won't last—wait, what?" Husk grunted, interrupting herself as she saw that her acidic skin was having no effect on Omega Red's tentacles.

"So now what?" Jubilee asked as Omega Red threw Husk a couple dozen yards away, refocusing his attention on the duo in front of him.

"Um… I could wish Amara was here, if that would help…" Iceman shrugged, backing away.

"Time," came Colossus' voice suddenly over the Danger Room intercom.

Iceman and Jubilee both breathed a sigh of relief as the enemy robotic duplicates immediately shut down.

All of the X-Men in the Danger Room turned towards the entry door as it hissed open, Colossus standing in the middle of the hallway beyond.

"A decent job, all of you," Colossus began as the X-Men converged on his position. "Three of the Acolytes downed, one incapacitated. Only Omega Red was still functional at the end, and even he was damaged."

"That wasn't fair!" Husk said, crossing her arms as her skin returned to normal. "Omega's tentacles didn't melt under my acid! I already know that I can melt metal with that stuff."

"Yes, you can melt 'metal' as in iron and steel," Colossus acknowledged. "Such a tactic would have worked on myself. But carbonadium is stronger, Husk, and would take much longer to break down."

"Carbon—what?" Husk said, raising an eyebrow.

"Carbonadium," Colossus repeated, his brow furrowing slightly. "The material that makes up Omega Red's tentacles. This is what I have been talking about. Although most of you possess admirable combat skills, far too few of you pay attention to the briefings. Your minds are elsewhere.

Turning to Sunspot, who was absentmindedly rubbing the scar of one of his recently-healed gunshot wounds, Colossus continued, "This applies to the reason you were 'knocked out' according to the simulation's rules as well, Sunspot. You attacked Legion with physical force, but he was in his Bartholomew form. That form has considerable superhuman strength and endurance."

"Uh… and so do I!" Sunspot protested. "Well, the strength part, anyway... And Legion and I have never gone up against each other yet, how do you know I wouldn't kick his butt?"

"We do not know," Colossus admitted. "But in simulations like this you must always assume the worst and work around it. Assuming you could take him in a real battle, and being proven wrong, would have much more disastrous results."

Sunspot grumbled something under his breath, but otherwise stayed quiet.

"However, I must commend you all on focusing correctly on the enemies that you are all more familiar with. Husk, that was a good strategy you used on Magneto, melting his helmet so Moonstar could access his mind. Jubilee, that was a good idea blinding Quicksilver, allowing Iceman to freeze him and Sunspot to deliver the final blow. However, you may want to restrain yourself from using that tactic too often, or your enemies may catch on."

"Hey, I finally got my own X-Man outfit thanks to our wonderful new policy," Jubilee said, motioning to the bulky yellow jacket she now wore over her normal uniform along with the fingerless black leather gloves and large tinted goggles over her eyes. "Given the new shades, I wanted to try to perfect it. And, with my weak arm—I had to kinda rely on it."

"I understand that, although the cast is off, your arm is still recovering from being broken," Colossus said. "Mine is as well. But you must push yourself—unfortunately, with Jamie's trial coming up very soon and the Registration Act going into effect not long after that, we must be ready for trouble."

"So, the overall rating?" Moonstar asked.

"B plus," Colossus said, waving his hand back and forth in a "give or take" motion.

Groans emitted from most of those present in response.

"Hey, I'll take it," Moonstar nodded. "I think that's pretty good considering Amara, Rahne, and Cessily are all on summer vacation and back home with their families… .well, and Kurt, though he participates in more advanced combat sessions than we do…"

"Alright, we are finished here," Colossus said, motioning for the others to follow him as he turned and began to walk down the hallway away from the Danger Room. "You have four hours until it is dinner time, then shortly after another session. I will be with most of the other instructors down here in a meeting for a while, so change and head back upstairs."

"Hey, Piotr," Moonstar asked, running to catch up with the much-larger Mutant, "I'm glad you guys finally figured out how to get the robotic duplicates to respond to my powers. How did Magneto…?"

"…Not respond to your mental powers at first?" Piotr said, his voice fading as he and Moonstar both turned a corner in the hallway. "That is more Hank's territory, but given your newer technopath powers, I think he was somehow able to use that…"

"Ugh, man, I am beat," Iceman sighed, leaning against the wall. "All this and we gotta do it again in another few hours?"

"I think you already know I'm with you," Jubilee said, pulling her goggles up. "I'm really starting to hate this place… but we've already been through this, I can't just walk away."

"Yes Jubilee, you've told us this. Several times," Husk said, rolling her eyes as she walked past them and into the girls' dressing room. "Complaining more about it won't solve anything!"

"Did Husk actually tell me to stop complaining?" Jubilee said, just softly enough where she was sure Paige couldn't hear her. "That's all she ever does."

"Well, she actually just has a sour mood a lot of the time… sorta like Rogue," Sunspot said. "That's a little different….

"…But I still prefer your method," Sunspot continued, putting his hands up defensively as Jubilee glared daggers at him. "At least you get it out of your system and can have fun more often than she can."

"And hey, at least with the new policy of everyone being 'X-Men', you finally got your own costume," Iceman smirked. "And I gotta say, it looks nice. Not as nice as mine, mind you, but still pretty darned good."

"Bobby, no one can SEE your costume," Jubilee said. "You're still all iced up."

"What? Oh," Iceman said, checking his hand briefly to be certain and then reverting back to his normal form. "Didn't even think about it. It's kinda hot in here, really…"

"I'm fine," Jubilee shrugged.

"Eh, I gotta be honest, I'm not seeing what Bobby's seeing," Sunspot said, rubbing his chin as he eyed Jubilee's costume over. "The new threads are good, and the gloves and tinted goggles give off a nice 'steampunk' vibe, but your long hair kinda gets in the way of your vision. I'd cut your hair a lot shorter, personally."

"Do NOT touch the hair," Jubilee said, pointing a finger in Sunspot's face. "You realize how hard it is to get hair this long this straight—"

"And silky," Iceman interjected.

"-and silky?" Jubilee continued as if Bobby had never interrupted. "No way I'm cutting all of this off."

"Exactly," Iceman said, bowing with an exaggerated flourish.

Jubilee held her fist out towards Iceman—all the while keeping her eyes squarely on Sunspot, her expression angry—as Iceman bumped her fist with his own.

"Well, I see who wears the pants in this relationship," Sunspot smirked before making his own way down the hall towards the men's dressing room.

"Oh, shaddup!" Jubilee giggled, no longer able to keep the faux serious look, and shoved Sunspot lightly from behind.

"So, uh… whaddaya want to do now?" Iceman said softly, putting his arm around Jubilee.

Jubilee gave Bobby a quick glance-over before pecking him on the cheek.

"You know, for all the pain and hard work we put into these sessions… it is really doing wonders for your abs," Jubilee smirked. "I think I'm finally seeing a little bit of definition there!"

"Th—wait, is that a compliment or an insult?" Bobby said, prompting only a quick giggle from Jubilee as he followed after her.

"Well, I'll tell ya what," Bobby continued. "I'm going in the pool to soak my sore barely-defined muscles. You coming?"

"Of course," Jubilee smiled before turning into the women's dressing room and closing the door behind her.

"Hey, I've had abs long before Bobby ever did!" Sunspot yelled out from inside the boys' dressing room.

"You have super strength, everyone knows your abs don't count!" Iceman yelled in response.

"Oh, man…. This really hits the spot," Bobby sighed as he slowly edged himself into the shallow end of the pool.

"It would probably help more if this heat wave would go away already," Jubilee said, simply jumping into the pool with a splash on one side of the shallow end. "It's been, what, two weeks now? I mean I know it's July, but still… almost one hundred degrees every day and not a cloud in the sky!"

"Eh, this is nothing, man," Roberto said, diving into the deep end before re-surfacing. "You guys should really come visit Mexico one of these days. Bayville is nothing compared to Mexico."

"Roberto, what are you doing here?" Bobby said.

"What? I heard you guys were going swimming, and I wanted to, too! What's the problem?"

Bobby sighed and glanced at Jubilee, who merely shrugged. "It's the X-Mansion, Bobby. You wanna get away from the others, the pool during a heat wave isn't the way to do it."

"Well anyways, thanks, but it's hot enough here, Roberto," Bobby said, the irritation in his voice somewhat evident. "In fact, this water's kinda warm, too. Please tell me that neither of you—"

"Hey, don't look at me!" Jubilee said.

"Oh, veer-ry funny," Roberto said as both of them looked at him. "I'm on the opposite end of the pool, you guys!"

"The pool feels fine to me," Jubilee shrugged, looking back at Bobby.

"Well, anyways," Bobby said, "I need to sit down and rest my achin' quarters."

Within a few seconds, Bobby had fashioned a chair made out of ice in the pools' shallow end and leaned back in it.

"Oh, geez, Bobby!" Jubilee said, taking a few quick steps back from her boyfriend's position. "Thanks for making the water around you about ten degrees colder!"

"What? I'm doing you all a favor! It's so darn HOT out here…"

"Just because YOU can sit against ice without going numb within a few seconds doesn't mean we all can, Bobby," Jubilee retorted.

Bobby waved the suggestion away, closing his eyes briefly before suddenly opening them again and sitting straight up.

"Hey, Jubes?"

"What is it now?"

"I got an idea. Obviously ice doesn't work well with you guys when you're in your bathing suits… but what about when you're in winter coats?"

Jubilee raised an eyebrow quizzically.

"…You think we should invite my aunt Helen, too?"

"I honestly didn't know you had an aunt Helen."

"So that's a no?" Jean asked, scratching her forehead absentmindedly with her pencil's eraser.

"No, that's a not a no, I just don't remember her," Scott chuckled.

"She was in that picture I showed you of my mom, circa twenty years ago."

"Which picture?"

"Umm... the one at the top of the column of pictures on the left side of my mirror," Jean said, pointing to the opposite side of her room.

Scott got up from Jean's bed where they both were sitting and stepped over to the picture, eyeing it closely.

"Oh… she's the one on the far left?"

"No, the far right," Jean sighed, scratching off Helen's name from the long list entitled "Wedding Invites" she currently had scribbled on a notebook in her lap. "Yeah, I'm not inviting her."

"Look, seriously, Jean, invite whoever you want to," Scott smiled, sitting back down next to his fiancé. "I'm not that great with this kinda stuff. You have a big extended family, and that's great—if you want to invite 'em all, invite 'em all. I mean, that's a problem I'd gladly take from you if I could—all I've got to invite are Alex and his foster parents."

Jean was about to respond when she heard a knock on her bedroom's door.

"Come i—" she began, but didn't get to finish before the door opened and X-23 stepped in.

"I need you both to come out back, quickly," Laura said, her eyebrows slightly narrowed as they always were.

"Why? What's going on?" Scott said, getting up.

Laura opened up the large double doors leading out to the X-Mansion's large courtyard and pointed up.

"Is this some sort of new training exercise that I don't know about?" Laura asked angrily. "Because it seems particularly… lax."

"Oh, for the love of…" Jean began, she and Scott slowly stepping out onto the courtyard as they gazed around them with an odd mixture of anger and awe.

The first thing that caught their attention was the nearly five-story tall collection of ice slides towering above the mansion. It looked very much like a frozen version of what you'd find at a waterpark—some of the curved slides were larger and open at the top, others were steeper and completely enclosed. All of them circled around and through each other at varying angles, held up by beams of ice, and they each ended at ground level at the swimming pool, which was itself frozen. There was a thin coat of water on top of the frozen pool, however, as each slide was leaking a fairly steady stream of water out of the bottom due to the heat.

The ice slides weren't it, though. The entire courtyard was coated in snow, and Bobby—in ice form- currently had his back to them. He was in the process of creating a small army of snowmen, most of them in exaggerated positions as if they were "fighting" each other, many snowman "corpses" lying on the snow.

In addition to all the ice and snow, it seemed that the temperature—at least in the near vicinity, as the snow melted away once it got near the edge of the courtyard—was quite a bit below normal, too. It was hardly freezing, but it was a little on the cool side.

Before Scott or Jean could get any more words out, their attention was drawn to loud yelling coming from inside two of the enclosed ice slides. Moments later Jubilee slid out of one of them on a small circular "ice float" and into the thin frigid layer of water on top of the frozen pool, followed less than a second later by Rogue on a similar ice float. Both of them had their winter coats on, and both of their coats were fairly soaked from all the melting ice.

"WOOHOO!" Jubilee yelled as she came to a stop with a splash. Getting up in the knee-high water and picking up her ice float, she turned to Rogue and continued, "TOLD ya, I'd beat ya, Rogue! Face it, I'm just more aerodynamic in the way I…."

Jubilee came to a stop as Rogue, facing the three standing at the X-Mansion's back door, just silently stood up, her eyes wide, and pointed behind the bragging X-Man.

Jubilee turned around, and upon seeing who it was, immediately cursed under her breath.

"I think someone officially pooped on this party," Rogue muttered, crossing her arms and starting at X-23.

"BOBBY!" Jean and Scott both managed to yell simultaneously, quickly walking towards the ice-covered Mutant on the far side of the courtyard who almost jumped out of his ice skin before slowly turning around to face the two instructors with a forced smile.

"Uh… hey, hi guys!" Bobby said, gesturing towards the ice slides. "Um… welcome to Bobby's Christmas in July party!"

Gesturing to all the snowmen he had created, he continued weakly, "Do you, uh, like my tribute to Calvin and Hobbes? Y'know, because of the snowmen and everything…."

"Bobby, what the heck do you think you're doing?" Scott yelled, his face red. Before Bobby could even reply, he continued, "Oh, wait, that's right! You don't THINK at all!"

"Hey, now wait just a minute!" Bobby said, starting to get a little indignant. "What's the problem? I was just using my powers to give everyone some much-needed cooling off during this hot summer! What's wrong with that?"

"The fact that you didn't tell the instructors before you did so, for one," Jean said, her tone only slightly less angry than Scott's. "You also froze the pool, and you of all people should know water expands when it freezes. Now the sides of the pool are all cracked—we're going to have to replace the whole thing!"

"Okay, my fault there, but, uh… I did tell someone else!" Bobby protested. "I told, uh… Ororo! Before she left with Evan for Africa! I've been, um, planning this for a while!"

"No, you did this because you knew Jean and I were doing some wedding planning and all the other instructors were in the lower levels for a meeting!" Scott shot back. "I swear, you have all the self-control of a third-grader!"

"Okay, I've been silent for long enough," Jubilee said, walking up to them just as Paige came down out of another ice slide. "What's the big deal? So he didn't tell anyone. Like this is actually harming anybody."

Just then, a large crack resounded from near the top of the ice slides as Roberto slid down one.

"Jean…" Scott said, looking upwards.

"I've got it," Jean sighed, launching herself up into the air and over to the part of the ice slide that was starting to crack.

"I think that proves my point," Scott said, motioning to Jean as she lifted up the section of the ice slide falling apart (and Roberto with it), then began to set them both gently down on the ground.

"No, it doesn't," Jubilee said. "We're the X-Men, Scott. We've taken on Apocalypse, a super-Sentinel, H.Y.D.R.A…. what makes you think we couldn't handle a collapsing ice slide? Bobby could patch that up in like two seconds."

"You're letting your recent upgrade in rank get to your head," Scott fired back. "Just because we can deal with potentially life-threatening situations doesn't mean we should bring them upon ourselves."

"Hey, look," Bobby said congenially, "I really could've just fixed that weak point in the slide if—"

"You know what? I'm done talking to you about all this," Scott interrupted. "Round up the other students and get back inside. When the others get out of their meeting they'll figure out what to do with you all. Jean and I will began to dismantle this huge… thing before it ends up falling on the X-Mansion."

"I don't think it'll fall quite that lopside—"

"INSIDE. NOW," Scott interrupted Bobby again, the red light behind his sunglasses flaring briefly in anger.

Iceman put up his hands defensively and grabbed Jubilee, who looked just about ready to blow her top. Both of them went back to where all the slides ended and began gathering up the others.

"Laura, please go down to the lower levels and inform them of what's going on," Scott yelled to X-23, who nodded before going back into the X-Mansion.

Turning back to Jean as she landed beside him, Scott said, "Now that a core bit of it's missing, it's not going to be long before that whole thing starts collapsing. Would you mind starting on it? I need to talk to someone really quickly."

"Sure, why not?" Jean said exasperatingly before launching herself into the air again. "I had the afternoon set aside for getting together wedding invites, but I should've known better…"

"Rogue," Scott called to the group of students that were starting to go back into the Mansion. "A word, please."

Rogue rolled her eyes before turning around and walking back over to face Scott. "What d'you need?"

"Out of all the students out here, I'm the most surprised to see you," Scott said, his tone much quieter but still quite angry. "I thought you were smarter than this."

"I was gonna say the same thing to you," Rogue replied bitterly.

"You've got to be kid—"

"What happened to you, Scott?" Rogue interrupted. "It ain't just you, it's pretty much everyone in charge around here. I know things have been tough lately, but y'all have taken it too far. Sure, you've always had a good head on your shoulders, and that's one of the things I've always liked most about you. But for most of the time I've known you, you've always known when to lighten up and have some fun."

"THIS is not—"

"Let me finish," Rogue snapped. "Then you can speak. I ain't gonna engage in a shouting match with you, got it?"

Scott simmered for a moment before reluctantly nodding an affirmative.

"Was all this stupid?" Rogue said, motioning towards the giant ice bridge Jean was disassembling. "Yeah, kinda. But I wasn't here when Bobby built it, and when Danielle told me about it I couldn't pass the opportunity up. But the reason he went this far is because he hasn't had much fun lately. None of us have, and that's because fun with our powers ain't allowed here anymore. Combat, combat, combat, that's all we do with 'em anymore—and maybe, given who you're talking about, we're allowed to use them to make chores easier- but that's it.

"Bobby didn't come to you guys with his idea because he knew you'd say no—THAT much is obvious. And yet… and yet with a bit of supervision, this all could've been an absolute blast, and with no real harm done, either. We all know the problem with Bobby is that he acts first and thinks later—but some of his ideas are great, if someone just restrained him a little. If he had had someone in charge, I dunno, guiding him, then he probably wouldn't have built it as high, and he wouldn't have frozen the pool. And then we all could've had a nice, relaxin' day cooling off in the middle of this god-awful heatwave we've been suffering through."

Scott started to say something, but then reluctantly shut his mouth.

Rogue nodded. "Alright, I'm done. Say what you need to."

"There's something you need to understand here," Scott said quietly. His tone was different now, Rogue noticed, a bit more wobbly, more… panicky? She wasn't quite sure. "I'm not sure if you've noticed or not, but especially since the incident with Jamie the eyes of the entire nation—if not the world—are right here. On us. Granted they can't get on the grounds, but don't you think at least one news crew has their camera trained on this piece of property 24-7? I'm sure right now—right this very second—some station's analyzing the footage since this huge ice… monstrosity… went up, figuring out some way to play it to their audience to catch headlines. I'm not sure what they'll go with, probably something that makes us look at least moderately bad. The point is, we can't afford mistakes. Even perceived ones. In addition to this whole Jamie thing, we've got Mutants disappearing left and right around the world and nobody knows how, so we've got to be careful—very careful—at least until after Jamie goes to court and this all simmers down."

"Scott, of all the people—" Rogue began, then interrupted herself and lowered her head into her hands briefly, groaning in an aggravated manner before pulling her head up and recomposing herself. "The Scott I thought I knew was a realist, not an idealist. So why are you talking this way? You know that no matter what we do, they'll find a way to spin it. Most people have already made up their minds about us, so why do you care if something like this happens? Screw 'em!"

"I don't think 'screw them' is exactly Professor X's philosophy," Scott said through clenched teeth. "We have to work at it, Rogue, but we can get it right. IF we're careful."

"No, they'll see us for who we really are if THEY'RE careful and don't jump to conclusions," Rogue replied. "All we have to do is be ourselves and not smile and nervously wave every time a camera is pointed at us."

"Giving little thought to the others around us is what's gotten us into this mess," Scott said sadly. "All the mishaps at school over the years, some of the stuff that's gone on here, even… is the result of us not being careful to clean up our messes. And we need to change that."

"Well," Rogue said, her tone starting to tremble slightly as well, "Then y'all can just clean up 'our' messes yourself. There's a reason that even though I graduated, I haven't become an instructor, an' it's because of crud like this."

Scott just stared at Rogue as she walked back into the X-Mansion. He had wanted to say something, but his mind was having trouble forming words, so many emotions were currently bubbling just beneath the surface.

Finally, with a huff Scott turned around and removed his glasses, firing directly into the ground and focusing on the task at hand as he started to separate the cracked pool concrete from the surrounding ground for easy excavation.

Bobby finished putting the final touches on his snowman.

Perfect!

The instructors may have rained on his parade and restricted him to his bedroom for the week (barring training sessions, of course), but that didn't mean he couldn't have some arctic fun in his own room.

"I think it looks great, Bobby," Jubilee said from behind him.

"It better," Bobby said, standing back and putting an arm around his girlfriend. "I spent all day on it—not that I have anything else to do."

"I'm surprised you're not sneaking out anyway," Jubilee responded. "Heck, it's what Sam and I did."

"Well, it ain't too hard with my powers," Sam said, shrugging it off. "I mean, I just get out the door, aim down the hallway, and take off. I'm here in all of a second."

"Point taken," Bobby acknowledged. "But still, a cold draft coming from either of your rooms would've drawn a bit of attention. Figured I better use my ice-crafting skills here."

"I am curious, though," Sam said, walking up to the snowman and, with one of his fingers, tracing the tubes hanging below the snow figure's arms. "How did you get Pyro's flamethrower bits to just hang below his arms like that? I figured what with them being made of snow, they'd just fall to the ground due to gravity an' all."

"Hey, you're talking to the Iceman. If it doesn't stick by itself, I'll make it stick with a little flash-freezing action."

Sam started to respond—right until his jawbone fell off his face and onto the floor. He looked down at the bone with his eyeless sockets, then back up at Bobby with a look of embarrassment etched into his skull.

"U-uh…" Bobby stuttered, stepping back, suddenly not sure what was going on.

"Bobby? Bobby, what's your problem?" Jubilee asked quizzically. "Like this doesn't happen all the time with Sam. Just pick it up and give it back to him."

"U-uh… yeah, sure…" Bobby said, sweating a bit as he bent down, picked up Sam's jawbone, and handed it back to the skeleton who accepted it with a grateful look on his skull and effortlessly re-attached it. "Is it, um… does it feel hot to any of you?"

"Oh, it feels real hot to me, mate," the Pyro-snowman laughed, suddenly beginning to move, the snow joints shifting effortlessly.

"What the-?" Sam stuttered, backing up as, to their horror, the snow began to slide off the figure, revealing a flesh-and-blood Pyro underneath.

"It's Pyro!" Jubilee said, stepping in front of Bobby, now suddenly in her uniform. "Somehow he's infiltrated the Mansion! Don't worry Bobby, we'll- AUGH!"

Pyro just cackled as he unleashed a torrent of flame on Jubilee, causing her to scream in pain and begin rolling around the floor. "Boy, you X-Men sure are stupid! Just outright chargin' at me like that!"

"I'll do a lot more than charge at ya!" Sam said, his sockets narrowed as he backed up a few feet and then took off at Pyro. Faster than the eye could blink, however, Pyro merely turned one of his flamethrowers on Sam until all that reached him was a whiff of ash.

"SAM!" Bobby yelled.

"Bobby! BOBBY!" Jubilee screamed. Despite her rolling around, the flames weren't being extinguished. "Use your powers, please!"

Bobby tried to use his ice powers on his friend to stop the flames, but as he made the appropriate motion with his hands, to his surprise, no ice formed.

"And now it's YOUR turn!" Pyro laughed, firing both of his flamethrowers full-blast at Bobby, who merely stared at his hands, stunned as he was engulfed in flames.

"BOBBY!" he heard Jubilee scream once more as he fell to the ground, in immense pain.

Bobby was shaken out of his nightmarish slumber by a quick slap on the side of the head.

"BOBBY! Bobby, please wake up! Use your powers!"

Bobby opened his eyes to see Jubilee standing anxiously over him. Hank and Xavier were just in the field of his vision, also looking at him, concerned. Judging from the ceiling, he was in the Mansion's medical room.

"What…what is going…" Bobby began, but a sudden torrent of sweat got into his eyes, obscuring his vision to mere blurs. He felt an immense burning sensation, as if his entire body were on fire.

"He's spiking again," he heard Hank say, computerized beeps in the background suddenly growing much more frequent.

"We've got to change the environment," Maverick's voice came through. "It's very clear he's overheating."

"No, don't—" Xavier began to say in alarm.

Just then, an even more intense heat gripped his left arm. From the touch, he was sure it was Jubilee's hand—but it felt like she was hotter than an oven.

"PLEASE, Bobby, listen to me…" Jubilee began….

…But he drifted off into blackness before he could hear what she was going to say.

He wasn't sure whether it was a minute or a day later, but Bobby felt himself regain consciousness again.

Now he didn't feel nearly so hot. A little warm, perhaps, but not at all like he was on fire.

Bobby weakly opened his eyes.

"He's up, he's up!" he heard Jubilee say, her voice wavering. Seconds later she was in his field of vision, dressed in a heavy winter coat.

It was just then that Bobby noticed the ceiling above him had icicles hanging down it, and clouds of vapor came out of Jubilee's nose every second or so.

"Jubes… what's going…" Bobby began to say weakly.

"We don't know," Jubilee said, tears falling down her cheeks and onto Bobby's chest. They felt like drops of lava, they were so hot. Bobby winced in spite of himself, and Jubilee immediately saw what she was doing and backed away a little.

"S…sorry," Jubilee said. "I didn't mean it."

Things finally began to connect inside Bobby's increasingly clear mind. Immediately he sat up.

"Jubes," Bobby said, fear creeping into his voice as he took in his surroundings, "…Why am I in the walk-in freezer?"

Both of them glanced towards the door as a clank sounded from the other side and it opened, both Hank and Scott entering in heavy coats before closing the door behind them.

"Charles apologizes for not coming with us," Hank said solemnly, "but his electronic wheelchair would freeze up in temperatures this cold."

"It feels… warm…" Bobby trailed off.

Suddenly, before anyone could stop him, Bobby yanked off all the various electronic readers and miniature suction cups attached to him and got up off the table. He went over to the side of the freezer and looked up above a shelf of beef, where the temperature gauge was.

It read negative ten degrees Fahrenheit.

"Bobby, Jubilation came into your room to tell you to come down to dinner and found you on the floor, pouring sweat, your skin beet-red," Hank said, reaching over and putting a hand on a stunned Bobby's shoulder. "She couldn't wake you up, none of us could. Charles even tried telepathically, but your mind was too clouded and feverish. You were exhibiting all the classic examples of someone who was extremely overheated. We took you up the medbay, but beyond a couple of brief spikes in your vitals, you didn't respond."

Hank sighed and pinched his sinuses before continuing. "Bobby, for some reason your natural body temperature has rapidly dropped in the past few hours. That's why it feels warm in here to you and why it'd feel positively scorching if you went outside this freezer normally. I've hypothesized that due to the recent over-use of your powers, your body has become too accustomed to the temperature of ice compared to normal room temperature."

"So what are you saying?" Bobby said, turning back to Hank, slushy tears falling from his eyes. "That I'm stuck in this freezer until you've found a way to… to fix me?"

"Well, in regards to that, there's good news and bad news," Hank said, smiling weakly. "The good news is, no, you're not confined to this room. If you convert to your ice form, you should keep your body cold enough to go anywhere you normally could. However… the bad news is that, as of now, I'm not… entirely certain… there's a way to reverse this."

"So I have to be in my ice form 24/7 now?" Bobby said as he changed into his ice form, his tone becoming slightly less panicky. "Well… at least it's better than being stuck in a freezer."

"I'm really, really sorry about all this, Bobby," Scott said. "Although I'm not particularly knowledgeable about this kind of thing, I'm sure Hank, Xavier, Jean, Maverick… they'll all do their best to help you. But hopefully… hopefully, if there's an upside to this, it's that you've learned to think about the consequences of your actions beforehand."

"Now wait a minute!" Jubilee piped up angrily. "What the heck is that supposed to mean?"

"Jubilee, please, leave it alone… not now…" Bobby said softly, his gaze dropping to the floor.

"No way! I'll be darned if they're gonna blame this on you, Bobby!"

"Jubilee, listen," Scott sighed. "I'm tired of arguing with you today. We're pretty sure that this came about because Bobby used his powers too much. And let's be honest, I've never seen him use his powers as much as he used them outside today."

"First off, you're wrong that that was the reason," Jubilee retorted. "Bobby was complaining about being hot before he even thought about doing all that."

"But he didn't have a heat stroke because of it…" Scott trailed off.

"Maybe it's because we've had two tough sessions a day for the last several weeks, huh?" Jubilee responded. "ALL of us have used our powers a lot more lately… you ever think that this was YOUR guys' fault? Oh wait, you guys are completely perfect, I forgot! There's no way Bobby could've possibly known that this would happen!"

"He may have been hot from overexertion, Jubilee," Hank piped in, though his tone was considerably calmer than either Jubilee's or Scott's. "Without monitoring his vitals at the time, we can't know for certain."

"And even if it was already starting," Scott said, "Creating a scene out of December in the backyard didn't exactly help."

"Just… stop, all of you. Just stop," Iceman said resignedly, slowly making his way over to the freezer door and turning the latch to open it. "Does it really matter? It's happened. I'm… I'm gonna go and… think about stuff."

As Iceman slowly closed the freezer door behind him, Jubilee turned to Hank and Scott, expression furious, tears flowing from her eyes.

"Things have been bad enough here lately," Jubilee sniffed, "But now I can't even touch my boyfriend anymore without getting a case of frostbite. Bobby was the only thing keeping me here… and now I'm seriously on the edge. And despite what all of us agreed to a few weeks ago, I'm not the only one feeling this way. You all keep this up… and you'll have a lot more people than just Kitty leaving the X-Men."

"Jubilee, wait, please—" Hank began as Jubilee walked over and quickly opened the freezer door.

Jubilee didn't say anything as she closed the door behind her, leaving behind Scott and Hank, who glanced at each other uneasily.

"How do you deal with it?"

Rogue's attention turned from her iPhone to Bobby, who was now standing in the entryway, in ice form.

"Oh my god, Bobby!" Rogue said, quickly getting up off her bed and running over to him. For a split second Iceman reached out to embrace her, but quickly thought better of it. Rogue, having become used to the idea of never touching anyone, never even thought about it, but instead just stopped by the door, putting a hand on it and smiling. "We were all so worried about you! Thank god you're okay!"

"I'm okay… sorta," Bobby replied, Rogue noticing his tone uncharacteristically somber with a hint of frustration behind it. "My body's gotten so used to ice that it now can't stand normal temperatures. I have to walk around in this 'ice suit' until—if—Hank and the others can figure out a way to reverse the process."

"Oh, Bobby," Rogue said, her face drooping. "I…. I'm so sorry…"

"But back to my original question," Bobby said. "With this… ice coating on, I'm too cold to touch anyone for longer than a second or two, and I definitely can't touch anything—well, except ice—with my bare skin. So… how do you deal with it?"

Rogue just looked at Bobby sadly for a moment before responding.

"I… what makes you think I deal with it?" Rogue said, her gaze falling down to the floor as she crossed her arms uncomfortably.

"Well, I mean, you're sane," Bobby said. "I'm… okay now, but after days, weeks, months of this… practically being Mister Freeze? Of not being able to directly touch my girlfriend, or anybody else? How do you deal with it?"

"Simple," Rogue sniffed, a single tear falling from her eye. "I don't."

"…You don't."

"Follow me," Rogue said, smiling sadly as she walked out of the room and down the hallway outside. "Just promise you won't tell anybody."

Bobby glanced nervously from side to side quickly, then followed Rogue, curious.

It was dark outside now—Bobby mentally noted he must have been out for a while. He could barely see as Rogue made her way ahead of him through the woods to the west of the Mansion grounds.

"Rogue, how far do we have to- oh."

Bobby stopped as they came to a clearing in the forest—but it wasn't a natural one. Taking up roughly about half as much space as the X-Mansion, the "clearing" was in fact a ton of felled trees, most looking like they had been toppled by some kind of super-hard force, not by any kind of sawblade. What was more, the toppled trees were splintered into several smaller bits, again by what looked like hard fist imprints. Hardly any of the tree sections were larger than a foot or two in diameter.

"Don't you ever tell anyone this, but every now and then, it… it really gets to me," Rogue said. "The night after Scott and Jean announced they were… getting married… was pretty tough. But anyways, on those tough nights when I can't sleep, I'll quietly go into Piotr's or Hank's room and touch them, siphon off a bit of their power. Not enough to put them in a coma, 'a course, just enough to give me their strength. Then I'll come out here, and just… just pound away.

"I know everyone says to pound a pillow when you get angry, but it ain't the same, y'know?" Rogue sniffed. "Pillows are too soft. Ya gotta feel some resistance there, like you're beating the crud outta something that matters."

"Yeah…" Bobby said softly. "Yeah, that makes sense."

"Now, with you, I figure your ice coating makes it hard enough where you can pound on these tree stumps normally without, y'know, breaking your hands. So… if you ever need to… here's the place."

Bobby looked around at the clearing, then at his hands, which slowly clenched together. Looking back up at Rogue, slushy tears now starting to run down his cheeks, he said, "Yeah… yeah, I think now would be a good time."

"Then have at it," Rogue said, smiling sadly back. "Just… y'know, don't knock down a new tree until you've completely splintered the last one."

"Yeah…. yeah," Bobby said absentmindedly, walking slowly up to the nearest tree segment of a reasonable size.

Saying nothing, Rogue left the clearing, the sounds of anguished exertion, along with wood splintering, following her back until she was nearly on the Mansion grounds.

The End
 

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