Running of the Jamies

Summary:
August 22 2014: Multiple Man goes to the Burning Human festival… bad idea…

M-Town Street

A street blocked off near one of the many concerts happening at Burning Human


Characters

NPCs

  • None

Mood Music:
[* None]


Mutant Town is alive. It's the height of the festival and the thump of music and the flash of lights can be seen or heard from nearly anywhere in the city. With the madness of what is basically a 4 block rave frequented by people with super powers, NYPD is on high alert, though historically there hasn't been much in the way of violence, tensions being what they are the City is being careful. And so cops stand at corners, mobbed by brightly colored people waving glow sticks, or hands that glow, and laser lights that flash and pulse in the sky are occasionally accentuated with holograms or gouts of flame or more ogranically fired laser beams, all sent sky ward into the night.

The music is loud, the lights are blinding and strobing, the throngs are Mutants… what could possibly go wrong?

Out on the edge of the area, nearly a full block from the edges of the festival itself, where the UMP UMP UMP UMP of music is dulled enough to have a normal conversation and where lasers don't blind your eyes every ten seconds and the dark once more seems to be closing in more naturally, a lone man walks, stumbling against the brick of a building and swaying alarmingly. Clearly he's had to much to drink, because he seems to be arguing with no one at all… Okay, not no one. A lamp post. He is arguing with a lamp post, which he suddenly wraps his arms around and tries to kiss. BONG.

*

Bobby has been keeping an eye on the festival. Things have been crazy, traffic inconvenient and the people? Well mostly they're just having a good time but like any large group things are bound to get out of hand sometimes. Okay, oftentimes. But so far they haven't gotten too out of hand.

At this very moment Bobby is in jeans and a black 'security' T-Shirt just… keeping an eye on the obviously drunk guy over there and hoping against hope that he doesn't do something stupid or dangerous.

*

Sara didn't exactly volunteer for this beat, but given her and Paul's recent investigations into the drug making its way through M-Town, apparently someone up top suggested it would be a good thing if the pair were assigned to keep an eye on things. They're not in uniform, nothing to indicate they're part of a police presence, but here they are. "Is there anything you won't eat?" Sara asks Paul as she hands money over to a food cart, taking a funnel cake from it for herself. Because hey, she's been working out. A lot.

*

Paul almost never minds working street fairs. The worst violence is usually a drunk, they're often fun and they always have food. "I never eat anything alive or that's been cooked while alive." he answers. Which is why Sara didn't know that. They've never gone somewhere that would serve either of those. Fortunately, fall cake is neither. "Just relax and enjoy this. With any luck, we'll get the overtime and do nothing more strenuous than dance a little to the music."

*

"DANCE!" cries the drunken man, clearly having heard at least one word of Paul's speech, and he swings around the pole he was trying to make out with, and then stumbles into the middle of the sidewalk where, with his ass thrust outward and his hands on his knees, he begins to twerk with a shocking amount of skill for a lean white guy with no ass to speak off. His long coat bounces and hops and jiggles though, covering up the thrusting booty and saving everyone from a true display of his skill. This is all punctuated by his off timed grunts of "Ugh! ugh! ugh!" A second man seems to stumble down the street from the same direction as the first, and he's singing, loudly, what appears to be a country music cover of Jay-Z's '99 Problems' of his own devising. Country if the heavy thick Southern accent is any indication, otherwise it's just a slow version of the song. Then a third and fourth man appear, walking in the middle fo the closed off street, their hands reaching out, fingers splayed over the other's face feeling them out. The expressions are hard to see, but the tone of the murmuring they share is awed by something. Oddly enough, all 4 of these gentlemen are dressed very similarly.

*

"Wait… that isn't… aw hell…" Bobby isn't completely sure he knows who that is. But given that this is M-Town after all, he suspects that he knows. Slowly, so as not to start a drunken panic, he starts to walk over, if for no other reason than twerking in the middle of the street should probably be discouraged. "Sir?" He doesn't want to yell out the name until he's sure who it is.

*

"Sure. That's how these things always turn out for us," Sara agrees blithely with Paul, picking a piece off of the funnel cake and popping it into her mouth. The terrible twerking is enough to draw her attention, but as someone with an official security shirt goes over…Well, she can wait a few minutes, right? That doesn't mean she isn't watching.

*

"Don't jinx us." Paul admonishes. "For a change, all we're going to have to deal with is some drunk guy shaking his ass. He even has clothes on. And if paid security can't handle it, we can let an officer do so. That's why they were invented: so that detectives can't think about more weighty matters."

*

Jamie Madrox stumbles free of the crowd, his arms held high, trying hard not to touch anyone because… ick. "ohshit." he says, looking up and spotting the other hims wandering the street. He looks over his shoulder, then back at the four, then over his shoulder and reaches up to rub at his eyes, "shitshitshitshitshit-" he mutters, trying to think.

Then he spots Bobby, "Don't touch him!" Jamie shouts just as twerking Jamie snaps up to his full height and takes Bobby's face in his hands. He cups Bobby's face and stares into his eyes, Twerkers pupils are dilated like WHOA, and he smacks his lips once as if he was chewing invisible gum, "You taste like pineapple." he informs Bobby, though he's clearly never 'tasted' Bobby.

"That's an odd thing for a grown man to taste like." he nods with sage seriousness at Bobby and his hands cupping Bobby's face move Bobby's head as well, making him nod in time with the Twerker.

New Guy winces as he spots this and cringes, "Triple shit." he says, running over, deftly dodging the reaching groping hands of one of the 'face hugger' twins over there and getting to Bobby and the Twerker, "Okay, this is getting bad quickly." he glances up, "Oh good." he says in a deadpan voice, "Cops. Perfect." Because it's easy to spot a Plain Clothes if you've spent a good portion fo your life afraid of them. Using his coat sleeve as a 'glove' he shoves Twerker away from Bobby and then looks at him,

"Okay, so shits gotten out of hand. I need you to focus because you only have about thirty more seconds of lucidity." he's talking very very fast, "Kid went active today, I was sent to make contact," he snaps his fingers in front of Bobby's eyes, "FOCUS!" he shouts, drawing Bobby's attention back to him as it started to waver, "active ability is to spread drug like symptoms through touch, which I didn't know. He shook hands with one of me, that one stumbled off before I could stop him and ended up in the mosh pit, and now w-" he stops talking as he turns to look over his should and in the direction of the party, "Quadruple shit." he says as a stumbling wall of men separate themselves from the light and sound show of the festival and begin making their way down the street towards the people on it. "Bobby, it spreads by touch. Anyone he's touched, touches someone else…" he looks back at Iceman and sighs, "Aaaaaaaaand you're just about gone. Peachy. The Prof is gonna kill me…" the approaching army of identicle men, all of whom feel the clear need to touch everything they see, possibly make out with it, or stare at any pretty shiney light, continue down the street like an army of the dead, if the dead were all tripping balls on X.

*

"Jamie the hell are you…" Then his vision goes blurry and kind of purple. Sane Jamie runs up and starts explaining but it's getting less… and less… sense… Bobby stumbles back, knowing only that he can't touch anyone. Wait… no. No one should be allowed to touch anyone. At all. His eyes harden and the air temperature starts to drop as the walls crawl and… is there one guy and girl over there… or six? He can't… nope… can't tell. Don't touch. Don't touch. Don'ttouchdon'ttouchdon'ttouch…

*

"Weighty matters, huh?" Sara arches a brow at Paul, taking another bite of funnel cake. "Like, say, a mob of men who look exactly alike, where alike includes the phrase 'high as a kite'?" Munch. Munch. Munch. It's not that she isn't going to intervene. It's just that…funnel cakes are awful when they're cold.

*

"They do all look exactly alike, don't they." Paul notes, also taking the time to eat his funnel cake. "Twins, okay. Triplets I can allow. Even Quintuplets. But dozens? Must be mutants. They haven't broken any laws yet." he points out. "We can't be certain they're high. Could just be having a good time. Except for that one. He looks upset." He indicates Jamie Prime.

*

Look alike is an understatement, "It's the fuzz!" one of the army of high men says, and then in one of the creepiest moments /ever/, all 50 or so stoned men look right at Sara and Paul and intone simultaneously, "Heh heh. Fuzzy wuzzy." Yup. Super weird that. A dozen or so break off from the herd and head towards the pair of cops, a few of them chanting 'fuzzy', a couple of them making grabbie hands in the air, a couple peel off of the group, distracted by something else they saw. The rest begin to wander in everywhich direction, some heading for side streets, others for building entrances, one of them crawls into a dumpster because… well who the hell knows why.

Sane Jamie looks around and ducks the groping hands of one Jamie and then slips away from a second, showing surprising dexterity, "Uh…" he says, running over to a parked car and hopping on the hood, "Don't let them touch you! They don't know what they're doing!" he calls out to the cops, dancing away from a giggling him that tries to snag his foot.

*

It's getting colder. Definitely getting colder. That guy in the security shirt is stumbling backward, aware on some level that his perceptions have been altered but unable to do anything about it or even muster the coherency to act appropriately. The only thing he knows, the last thing he was told, is that people must not touch. That has to be prevented. He looks over to Paul and Sara. If he just… encased them completely in ice, nothing could touch them. He's about to try that when the Jameis start chanting. No. Nononononononono.

"DON'T TOUCH!!!" A wave of cold goes out, accompanied by some jagged barriers of ice sprouting out of the ground in front of them.

*

"Don't let them-" Sara sighs, giving her funnel cake a last, mournful look. "Well. It was a nice thought, right?" She starts to push her sleeves up, then rethinks that plan. Instead, the Witchblade starts to climb up her arm, offering at least some protection from things that shouldn't be touched. "Any thoughts on how we deal with things that shouldn't be touch-" And then Bobby chimes in with his own solution. "Yeah, that'd do it. Hey, kid! Can you corral the crazies with that stuff?"

*

Paul pulls the evidence collecting gloves from his pocket, puts them on then withdraws the stun gun from his jacket. Non-lethal weaponry is standard for these things. Shooting minorities always gets such bad press. Which is not to say they don't have guns too if they need them, they're just for when it really hits the fan. "I wish I had armor and tentacles. Knowing there's a gate to Tartarus a block and a half over just doesn't seem as useful."

*

Jamie Madrox dances about on the car, realizing that his going up to a car top was not likely the best of escape plans, "Hey! Quit that!" he says, yanking the helm of his jeans free from graspy fingers. When an icy barracade appears in front of a few of the Jamies, they simply reach out to touch it… and then they start to rub at it and fondle it and one of them tastes it, "Pineapple!" he proclaims happily. Jamies begin to disappear into buildings now, and more then a few have vanished down side streets, still others try walking around the ice to get to the cops, these determined few seem to think the cops are in some way covered in fuzzy and they wish to touch it. A lot.

*

Bobby probably could if he were, you know, sane, corral the Jamies. Or just freeze them mostly solid. Unfortunately his vision is swimming, beetles are crawling over that car over there and the only thing he knows is… yeah, you guessed it. Sara's voice draws his attention back to the cops and he attempts to drive a wedge, quite literally, between the two. Ice forms between them, sprouting up into a separating wall a couple feet thick in the space of a few seconds before the crowed of Jamies gets his ire. No, that won't do either. Do you know what'll break that up?

Ice starts to crystalize above the car, raining down in golf ball sized chunks. Instant hailstorm!

*

"So that's a no," Sara says as she jumps to the side when the ice floe materializes between her and Paul. "Also, still not tentacles. You've seen the tentacles version now!" she calls back to him, drawing her own taser and eyeing the crowd of Jamies. They're going to need so many more charges than they have. One Jamie, though, is not acting according to the pattern. Which is noteworthy. "Hey, you!" she calls toward Jamie Prime, trying to climb up to go after him.

*

Yes, Paul's seen the Darkness' version of tentacles. And his win. "Ok, fine. Not tentacles." He reaches out to tap the ice wall forming between him and Sara and shakes his head. One of the Jamies gets too close with those grasping arms and he gets a stun gun to the chest. "Do you think that if we stun the one who seems to know what's going on, the rest will fall over?"

*

Jamie Madrox reaches down to help Sara up onto the car, "Hello there sexy police lady. I'm nobody in particular and nothing odd is going on here curre-watch your foot-tly so if you would kindly move on and assume you ate some bad funnel cake and hallucinated that would be super." he offers in mock hopefulness.

"No, your left foot." he amends. Great. Now he and Sara are trapped a top a car dodging the ever giggling crowd of stoned men. Now it really is like a dance. Which is of course, when the hail starts, "Ohno." Jamie says and he quickly pulls his coat up over his head and hunches his shoulders. Sadly, the Jamies on the ground do not possess that sort of cognitive ability. As the hail falls, they begin to multiply… exponentially. What was a half dozen Jamies around the car almost instantly becomes nearly sixty, officially stranding Sara and Jamie alone atop a sea of stoned arm wavey men who need to touch ALL THE THINGS. "Bobby!" Jamie squeals, "TURN IT OFF!" you know what else is hard? Dancing on a car roof that's quickly collecting golf balls of slippery ice, that's what.

The Jamie silly enough to almost reach Paul, a stupid grin on his face and hands out stretched looking to touch the fuzzy wuzzy, drops like a stone, his limbs stiffening and his body twitching slightly as he goes down. Hey. Stun gun works nicely at least. Sadly, he was only one of many.

*

The crowed of annoying people trying to touch isn't getting any smaller. Fine. Bobby will just lift that car into the air. Really high. Ice starts to form beneath it in a pillar and up it starts to go. Ten feet… twenty feet… uh… Bobby's not stopping. At least it's not hailing anymore. The other thing he's doing is singling out Jamies who really annoy them and starting to try to make them Jamie-cicles. Sadly… one of the Jamies he sees is the one on the car. "Don't touch her!" More ice for the only helpful Jamie. Stoned Bobby is… you know it's a really good thing he never does this on purpose.

Paul’s Jamie predicament doesn't go unnoticed either but at least in this case Bobby's being helpful. He starts to lay a thin sheet of ice across the ground making it, hopefully, very difficult for anyone to move.

*

"That's the plan!" Sara calls back to Paul, clawing her way up onto the car after Jamie Prime. "I was sort of hoping you'd-" And then the car is going up, and that was very much not the plan. She bites back a yelp as Bobby blows the car in the air, barbs of Witchblade digging into the metal of the roof to help her stay where she is. "You're the one who has a clue here, buddy!"

Christ! Where did all those come from? And then the car starts rising on a pillar of ice. Unfortunately, Paul has his own Jamies to worry about and he starts stunning them as soon as they get close enough to reach. Right up to the point he slips on the ice and falls on his ass.

*

Jamie Madrox adopts a new Kung-Fu move on the spot. He dubs it 'Monkey Clings To Tree In Hurricane', and it is also handy for when you don't want to fall fourty… fifty… sixty??! feet to your death from atop an icey slippery car roof. Jamie wraps around the anchor's Sara, as his new Kung-Fu move suggests, or tries to anyway. Sadly, his leg won't move, which is when Jamie becomes very, very aware of the fact that from his thigh to his foot, he's frozen to the car. The rest of him is wrapped around Sara. He flushes and untangles himself, "Ahem!" he makes a deep manly chuffing noise in his chest, "So. Yeah. This is happening." he says in a 'what are you gonna do' sorta tone. "You know what the worst part is?" he asks Sara as the ice moves over his belt. "Shrinkage. Every damned time. I'm putting so much laxative in his coffee tomorrow morning…" he seems to accept his fate with grace now that he's attached to the High Rise Car Penthouse. Jamie crosses his arms over his chest, "What do you want to know?" he asks conversationally.

Meanwhile yet another flaw in Bobby's plan to stop the Jamie's is made apparent. His sudden ice rink means when every Jamie falls down, two rise in his place, like a goofballs slapstick version of Hydra… Frankly, this is the sort of thing the NYPD never really trains you for. "Fuzzy!" and one of the Jamies leaps at the downed Paul, only he's thirty feet away. Conveniently someone put this slip n' slide here, and now a pair of twins is hurtling slip n slide style at Paul, grabbie hands out stretched.

This entire block is chaos. The festival in M Town is in full swing about a half a block away, while down here on a mostly abandoned (as everyone’s at the party) street, there is a mob. A literal mob of shuffeling, touchie-feelie identical men all wandering around like lost children meander about. Meanwhile ice walls and ice rinks are popping up all over the place, some Jamies are fondling the walls, others are falling on the rinks and multiplying, and one appears to be currently frozen to the roof of the car seven or eight stories up in the air, supported on a pillar of ice, with a spikey spiney woman in metal armor. So you know, Tuesday again.

*

Bobby isn't even remotely lucid, but ice prisons seem to be the order of the day. There's one for that Jamie. And one for that Jamie. And one for that Jamie and a retaining wall for that group of Jamies. He's not gotten around to freezing Paul yet because, honestly, he's forgotten about them both what with being able to taste sound, hear the color purple and hallucinating Jamies that aren't there… which takes some doing considering how many Jamies are there. He's not in a happy place, no. And it's getting colder. Much, much, much colder.

*

Ororo came to the festival for the same reason she has been coming almost every day, to make sure nothing happens to give mutants a bad name. There seems to be a commotion happening down the street from the big party, and so Storm goes to investigate. Her brow furrows as she looks at the crowd. They all look remarkably alike and she sighs. What is Jamie up to this time. That many twins, of course she suspects Jamie. After all, it's Burning Human, a huge party. Jamie would be naturally where the fun is.

She stops when she sees all the chaos, trying to make sense of it all.

*

"Yeah, you're super funny, buddy, but unless you've got a compelling reason why tasing your ass won't make the rest of these whack jobs disappear?" Sara levels her taser right against Jamie's chest, which is pretty much her only option at this point. "We're going to have us a little experiment. Counting to three…"

Paul stuns one of the Jamies that slides into him and a boot tot he face stops the second. Which promptly splits in two. So that's where they're all coming from! And he's not going to do that again. Instead, he starts scrambling backwards as fast as the ice will let him.

*

Jamie Madrox's arms, crossed over his chest, laughs in Sara's face as if something she said was just peachy priceless. He leans over, far as his iced up lower half will allow and slaps his Ice Thigh lightly, "Aaah… Man I love of you people think. It's like we're in a sci-fi movie or something. You just assume that because you're out numbered that clearly there's a hive mind with a big central brain you can just take out and then suddenly you won't be out numbered anymore. Hee hee. Lady, you're a cop, and I get that you've been trained to spot the leader in a mob, take out the agitators, I took the same classes you have." he looks down, "You see any agitators down there? Any leaders? You think there's an off switch to this?" he beams at her and spreads his arms wide, "Take your best shot sexy-cop-lady, all you're gonna do is make it so the only person up here you're responcible for seeing safely to the ground isn't capable of saving himself anymore. Hell, I'm not even the guy you should be talking to!" he points in the general direction of the ground, "The-the… I dunno, the real one? The first one? He's down there somewhere. How do you think all this got started??" Yes people, Prime isn't the one on the car roof, that's just an uninfected dupe. "Even if you could take him out, no one else would be bothered. Seriously, TV rots your brain sexy cop lady, you shouldn't watch so much of it. When has real life /ever/ had that easy a solution. I mean seriously." he shoots her a disdainful look.

Boot Face Jamie continues after Paul, as does New Boot Face Jamie, though their scrambling isn't nearly so effective as his, "Fuzzy!" now they sound sad as he begins to gain distance on him. WHY WON'T HE LET THEM LOVE HIM?! So mean.

And of course, there are the countless other Jamies. Some find themselves trapped in ice prisons, from which comes a disturbingly common comment about pineapples, while others continue to wander aimlessly into nearby buildings and down side streets. Seriously, this is… this is just to many Jamies. He's not capable of making this many, not in all the years Storm has known him, which is many, has he been this powerful. His brain always overloads and shuts down. There are well over a hundred now, possibly two hundred… and growing as they slip, fall, bump, into and onto everything in sight.

*

At least Bobby has stopped making the ice pillar grow. Now he's just icing random Jamies. And… "Storm?" He calls up. His words are slurred. He can't see very well but the floaty lady has caught his attention. Okay. Too many people touching. What he needs to do… is just wall off the streets. He starts doing this. It'll keep the jamies out of their little area… except for the ones that are already in. This'll work right? There is no possible way this could go wrong/

"What I just heard was that it won't hurt anything to tase you," Sara informs the Jamie on the roof with her, then proceeds to do exactly that. Of course, their proximity, and the car roof, and the ice are not the best environment for doing that without also getting herself, but at least the Witchblade can provide a little protection from the pain. She's also not going anywhere for a moment after she does it.

Ororo looks this way and that and sees… how many Jamie's? This is madness. Her eyes begin to glow, going from blue to white and she rises into the air. Luckily, she's never hidden who she is, so being in her regular clothes and showing off her powers, not really a worry for her. The winds start to whip up and down the corridor created by the buildings.

She starts to gather the many Jamies. Clearly he's learned to create more without going all fuzzy in the head. That just means she needs to make more. Winds scoop up two groups of Jamies and starts buffeting them together in a small hurricane, extra Jamies being thrown out of the vortex as she creates more and more and more. This has always worked in the past.

"Ow, shit." Paul got out of the ice slide and hit pavement. But at least he can get to his feet again and waits for the two Jamies so he can stun them. Now what? Now he presses up against a wall to avoid the hurricane and… and Jamie debris? "And they wonder why normal people have a problem with them." he mutters and sidesteps a Jamie that smashes into the wall next to him. And now there's two! Both of whom get stunned.

Jamie Madrox just shakes his head, "I'm never leaving agai-" and then he's tased. When, eventually, his mental processes all decide to function again, and this dupe is reabsorbed, Jamie will decide that leaving the mansion for any reason ever is just a stupid idea. So stupid. Never. Again. Also cops suck. They're mean and shocky.

How lucky for Car Jamie, and all of the Paul Jamies, that being stunned means they won't remember what comes next. As Storm reaches out and scopes up a couple dozen Jamie's and flings them about inside a controlled tornado, she begins to hear a sound that quickly spreads and amplifies. From the Jamie's inside, to the Jamie's that are flung outside, to the Jamie's that are created by the impacts of having been flung outside, to the Jamie's inside the ice prisons and the walled off section. It is a scream. The noise from this section of the block from before was mostly jovial, weird clearly, but happy and not at all attention getting. But as twenty, then fifty, then a hundred, then two hundred fully grown men begin to scream in the abject terror of panicked traumatized children, the 'feel' of this amusing and annoying night changes abruptly from one of goofiness to one of danger. Jamies that were before obsessed with touching Paul, staring at him with almost worshipful eyes suffer clear facial shifts from a sort of awed stupor, to terror. Pure panic. Before Jamie's stumbled about, shambling, meandering, the vast majority of them even distracted themselves by touching cars and ice walls and brick and each other. No more. Now they /FLEE/. Like a tightly packed crowd in a mall suddenly rife with gunshots, Jamies stop fondling things and scatter in full fledged trampling flight in every single direction at once. What was a few Jamie's headed Pauls way turns into a countless wall of panic stricken men, stampeding everything in their path and multiplying as they go.

The screams of 'MOMMY!!' manage to cut through party music a block away, they neatly reach out and slice through the frivolity, the merriment of the festival, and instil just a little despair into everything. No one okay screams for their mother like that. No one.

*

Bobby should stop the Jamies. He can't though. He's not with it enough. What he does do is let the cold within him run amok. The temperature near him goes colder and colder… and colder… "YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHH!" There's a pulse of absolute freezing air that radiates out from Bobby. He colapses as ice crystalizes on him. And everything else within a fairly sizable ring as a wave of near absolute zero flash freezes most of the water around. The ice nerd isn't moving.

*

The taser was better than the screaming.

Sara is just recovering from the former when the latter starts, going to one knee and lifting her hands to her ears before the Witchblade can offer some protection against the din. This? This is just way more than there's anything she can do about.

*

Storm watches as Jamie reacts like a frightened child. She never taught him as a student, so doesn't have the in depth knowledge of his dossier as she would one of her students, but she knows enough to see a person in a panic. Not good. The small hurricane stops, dropping all the Jamies.

*

There's nothing Paul can do about this. He's just one guy and doesn't even have armor or tentacles. And this… It's not even a riot. It's more like the running of the bulls in Pamplona. The running of the Jamies in Mutant Town. And they're probably almost as dangerous. turning, he runs for the nearest car and leaps onto the roof, prepared to stun any of them that try to come up as well. Though they /should/ just go around since its the path of least resistance. Should.

*

Jamies here Jamies there Jamies every-godamned-where. The car under Paul rocks alarmingly as Jamies stampede past it, the car beneath Sara and the much maligned poor FrozenTased Jamie sways as well, and there is the sound of broken glass as Jamie's leap through windows, the sounds of cracking ice as Jamie's pound on ice walls with their fists, the thunderous plodding of hundreds of feet, and of course, the screams of 'Mommy!'. All of the noise takes a sudden drop in decibel level as forty plus Jamies simply flash freeze in place, mid stride, statues of blue frost and icicles appearing in a perfect circle around the epicenter that is Bobby Drake.

*

Bobby isn't frozen. He's coated in ice, yes, but not frozen. And he's breathing. He is not, however. moving. At all. Something seems to have broke in him. The air temp is slowly returning to normal, not that this is any consolation to people that are, say, stuck on a car on an ice pillar eight stories in the air. Paul, at least, can get around now that Bobby isn't doing his 'no touchy!' routine.

*

"Seriously, someone needs to shut this thing down!" The ice around Sara and tased Jamie is starting to melt, as the Witchblade glows with strange fire at her hands, responding to the threat the only way it knows how. Sara wants a peaceful resolution. The Witchblade just sees danger.

*

Noticing the Jamies that are suddenly frozen into place and silenced, Storm gets an idea. Mind you, her last idea turned this into a riot instead of a very chaotic touchy feely mob, so she starts to doubt herself. She swallows and clenches her jaw, knowing she has to do *something*. She made this mess. It is her responsibility to fix it.

*

Looking over to Paul, she calls out to him, flying over. "Get to higher ground if you can, I'm going to see if I can't freeze all but one." Even as she says this, it starts getting much colder, arctic winds making it seem like Bobby's ice is spreading.

*

"Sara!" Paul calls. "Take that one with you and go fly onto a roof." Higher ground she says. *ZAP* One Jamie gets stunned as he gets too close for his comfort. "You!" he calls to the flying mutant with the obvious wind powers who's trying to freeze him to death. "Call one of your friends and get that car down off that ice before it crashes to the ground and kills someone!" At least what she's doing isn't going to melt it. "And I…" he murmurs dryly, "will try to think of how to explain this as a gas explosion." Seeing the tide of Jamies thinning as most have rushed past, he leaps over a few onto the pavement and tries to put as much distance between him and them as possible.

*

The Jamie's that were piling up against the ice wall are suddenly blasted back the way they came, tumbling over one another as Storm's wind drives them on. They catch onto anything they can, curling into their coats, their expressions confused, scared, a myriad of different things but no longer universal. The cold is cloying, and soon frost begins appearing on every flat surface like a spreading spiderweb. Meanwhile, the High Rise Honda penthouse begins to sway more than before. It's not exactly built on a coded architectural foundation designed to battle winds after all. FrozenTased Jamie flops limply back and forth in his ice prison, first his arms dangle this way….. then that way… then this way…

*

There's a soft, pained, moooooooaaaaaan from Bobby. Slowly he hauls himself to his feet, looking - wonder of wonders - lucid. "I… ugh… my head. Jamie, I'm gonna kill you…" He mutters as he tries to get his bearings unaware that the ice tower is teetering in his direction. "Where… who… right, the Festival. Uh…" He looks up. "Storm?"

*

But…but there's a lot of weird weather conditions right now. A whole lot. And Sara isn't that good at flying just yet. On the other hand, her options right now? Very limited. So out come the wings, and she hooks her arms beneath her Jamie's arms before taking off. The flight isn't exactly graceful, between the oddly added weight and the strange weather conditions, though, a change in air temperature sending her sharply toward the side of a building.

*

Continuing with the icy winds, Storm worries. Does this count as killing a human life? Many of them will have hypothermia, more will likely have frost bite. Jamie is a friend. Or at least friendly. And he is human.

She looks to the Honda and reaches out to it with another blast of heavy wind, bringing the car to a gentle drop onto the ground rather than letting it fall. "Iceman," she says, protecting Bobby's identity by using his code name. Yes, he may be public about himself, but it's only polite. "Freeze as many copies of Multiple Man as you can, the ones I am unable to reach." Ororo makes a mental note to find out what got into Jamie and then find a way to Gibb slap him that doesn't produce a mess like this.

*

Jamie Madroxs freeze, Jamie Madroxs are blown (not like that you pervs), Jamie Madroxs pile up against any flat surface like snow drifts. And of course, one Jamie hangs limply from Sara's arms, weighted down with an extra hundred or so pounds of ice around his legs. Cause why not right?

*

"Freeze… oh right."

An ice ramp starts to form and in moments, after spiraling upward with an apologetic look to Sara, 'Iceman' has enough height to begin putting those Jamies still milling about or in view into ice cages. "How the hell are we gonna get all these guys back where they belong? Especially when touching them puts you into the bad trip from hell?" Okay, Bobby's only had one trip - this one - but it's been quite enough thank you very much.

*

The wind blows Sara and her passenger Jamie into the side of the building, where - thankfully - the Witchblade is able to grapple in, more tendrils helping to hold up Jamie. As Bobby starts the icing, she clings where she is. This? This is something the mutants need to handle.

*

Storm shakes her head. This is exactly the sort of thing she was really hoping to avoid here at the Burning Human. Wasn't this festival supposed to be peaceful? "One problem at a time, Iceman. One problem at a time."

*

Bobby pulls out a phone with a sigh and texts Illyana, hoping she's earth side. <Have a problem. Need to clean up a lot of Jamies. Could use some help. Bobby.>

"I'm calling in backup now." He says to both Storm and Sara. "Hope she doesn't kill me."

*

Settling to the ground, the winds subside. Ororo looks around her at the mess of prone bodies, hoping that she didn't kill any of them.

*

A two-dimensional disk of light, familiar to most people here flares to life and then slides down to reveal a certain blonde sorceress dressed in her favorite boots, black jeans and a long-sleeved top. "By the Abyss, what in Hades is going on here?" Illyana says, boggling at the sight.

*

Bobby comes back down to ground level, rubbing at his face. "Ugh. I wish I could tell you for certain." He looks around at the forty flash frozen Jamies. "Jamie came into contact with soem kind of… hallucinogen that spreads by touch. We need to get all the live dupes to some place they can be dealt with so he can reabsorb them… and uh… get rid of all the ones I seem to have killed after he touched me." Ooops. Bobby feels a bit sick. It's not like he's killed Jamie, but at the same time, it's exactly like he's killed Jamie. Forty times. It's a good thing he doesn't do recreational drugs…

*

Storm rubs at her temples, closing her eyes. "Why did Jamie think that doing drugs was a good idea? Or is someone being foolish enough to slip people drugs at the Burning Human? I take it no one ever watched Misfits to see how badly that always turned out?" She looks to Bobby. "Who did you call?"

*

"He called me." Illyana says, striding forward towards the mess of Jamie's. Her tone is grim. First things first. Get this mess off the streets. As she walks, stepping disks appear and start to teleport out Jamies. She can get her disks to open to a thirty foot diameter without pushing herself and so they start to wink out by ones and twos and fives and tens. "Why can wait." Right now? It's Damage Control mode.

*

Bobby shakes his head sadly as he watches Jamies disappear. Did they get all of them? He's not sure. And he's not up to freezing anyone else right now. In fact he's not sure he'll be up for that for a bit. "Sorry guys. I really wish I knew what happened." He was after in the throes of an awful hallucinogenic episode.

Sara gets another apologetic look. "You okay ma'am?" She seems okay but he did just flash freeze… uh… everything.

*

Storm nods her head to Illyana in thanks as she appears and starts causing the Jamies to wink out. "Well, at least in Limbo there is only so much trouble they can cause. Let us hope that not too many of them get eaten." She starts looking in the buildings for spare, hidden Jamies.

*

Illyana's jaw tightens a bit at that throw-away line from Storm, the young woman standing a bit straighter. She looks over to Bobby. "You gonna be OK?" She asks, checking on him first. She doesn't want to jump back out if he doesn't have himself together.

*

Bobby shakes himself and clears his throat. "Yeah. I'll be okay. I'm gonna owe Jamie an apology though. When he comes to. And is back in one body." Sorry I killed you? A bunch? "Uh, thanks for coming out so quick Illyana. I wasn't quite sure what we were going to do." He's not really equipped to deal with the fallout of something gone this wrong.

*

Storm comes out of the building and shakes her head. "None in there. Are you two alright?" Ororo approaches the pair, her brow still furrowed in a mild frown. "Let's hope whoever slipped the drug to Jamie didn't do the same to someone whose power is more lethal."

*

The look that Illyana gives Bobby is long and hard but finally she nods. She'll tell Nancy to check up on him or something. Someone better with emotions. Someone that has a stronger attachment to the snow cone. Right now, there are other priorities than how he's handling things. "Maybe you guys should check to make sure there aren't any other freakouts going on. I'll see what I can do about Jamie." Her hands rise upwards and a stepping disk appears and takes her off to Limbo. And a small army of Jamies.


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