[Sama in the MU] Part 9
Added 2025-03-30 04:03:40 +0000 UTC“Well, this is gonna sound strange, but you’re not an Iceman,” I told Bobby Drake, who just looked at me.
“Are you joking?” he asked, forming a snowball on his hand.
“Toss that at me,” I told him. He blinked, and then lobbed it at me with a shrug.
It hit my Null, and broke apart instantly. Drops of water fell down my Vajra and spattered on the ground.
“You melted it instantly?” he asked, wondering where I got the power from.
“Nope. Keep it in your hand this time, and press it in. Tell me what you feel as you try to keep it together.”
Frowning, he formed another iceball, and held it in his fingers as he pressed it forward against my Null.
As he touched it, the ice instantly melted and gave way, reverting back to water, which dribbled back to the ground.
“Ouch!” He put his hand to his forehead. “It felt like something snapping. Like I lost a connection.”
“You did. You lost your link to the water. When the psychic energy you used to stop the motion of the water hit my Null, it went away, and it reverted back to water.”
He frowned. “Okay, you’re saying I have a psychic link with my ice?” he asked, understanding that.
“No. I’m saying you have a psychic link with water. You are an utterly massively powerful hydrokinetic.” I toed the spattered water on the ground, already soaked in, and it came up out of the ground, swirling around the edge of my Vajra, and gathered into a ball of water with the volume of the two iceballs he’d been holding, floating there in my hand.
He stared at me in disbelief. “That’s my power?” he asked skeptically.
I glanced at the water, and there was a crink as it instantly froze very, very solid. I tossed it in the air... and the instant it was past my Vajra, my Null hit it, and it fell apart into water again. The spray fell down, entered the Vajra around my hand, and halted in midair. I flicked a finger, and they all froze again.
“That is totally your power,” I agreed, and he stared in disbelief. “Think about this.” I pointed off to the side of the training area, where Hercules and Juggernaut were discussing wrestling moves with one another. “Make a block of ice there. Oh, ten feet cubed.”
His arm partially transformed, and the air grew cold. Sparkles of frost gathered with amazing speed, and in less than five seconds, a ten-foot cube of ice appeared.
“A lot of your training has been how to shape your ice, picture forms, and form it quickly, right?” He nodded. “So, you’ve been ignoring the physics of it all.” I cocked a finger at the cube. “Do you realize you just drew thirty TONS of water out of nowhere, and then you stopped the atoms from moving, lined them up, and locked them into a specific form of ice that is way harder than any normal ice, almost as hard as steel?
“You know telekinesis, right? You aware of how hard it is to move thirty tons worth of stuff? And then on top of it you blow right through the latent freezing point and lock all the atoms in place. Furthermore... where the hell are you getting all the water from?” I made an airy gesture. “You think you can just pull thirty tons of water out of the air? Do you know how much air that would take? Do you know how dry the air would be right now if that was the case?” I gave him a funny look as I pulled a bag out of my Masspack with my hair, peeled it off and held it up. “You know what this is?”
“Uh, it looks like a steak?” he asked, trying to cope with this new look on his powers.
“It is. What is it from the point of view of a hydrokinetic?” I questioned further.
“Uh... a water supply?” he asked, and I nodded slowly.
And I ran my hand over it, pulling out the water.
The steak crumbled to dust in my hand, falling apart as I pulled the water out. Even the bone shattered to dust and fell away to my feet.
He stared, and after a moment, he got it. He looked at me, and I just kept staring him in the eyes, that globe of water in my hand.
“What’s really fun about water that comes from organic stuff is that it keeps a record of the life energy of the creature. You can transfer that energy to another area of water.” One globe of water touched the one of ice in my hands, and there was shimmer.
Out of that ball of ice rose a perfect duplicate of the steak I had just reduced to dust. He could even feel the various extra atoms required to rebuild it getting sucked into the water to form it.
His jaw fell open.
“Now, my range on this is four inches. I can draw the water out of something I can basically touch... and kill it almost instantly. You... could do that to a whole city.”
He swallowed.
“Now, you might have realized the implications of reaching into and directly freezing the water in someone’s body a long time ago, and you’ve sworn not to do so. It’s stopped you from exploring what your powers can do. For instance, you’ve totally ignored the fact that when you ice up, you ARE ICE. You aren’t meat. You actually turn yourself into water and freeze it, so you are solid. When you revert, you are drawing back the atoms of your flesh and bone body, and reforming it.” I held up my hand, and there was a crink as the flesh of my right arm was transformed into ice. He stared at it, because my bones were still visible inside. “Yeah, my bones are way too hard to change with this.” I moved the icy arm around, and then reverted it back to flesh as he watched, the water rebuilding and reforming the matter slowly, with exquisite control, a kind of macabre beauty to it.
“Next.” He blinked, and I tapped the water. It began to bubble, and suddenly steam began to vent out of it, forming a serpentine cloud of vapor I rapidly twisted around myself. “Steam and mist are both water. Your forming ice sculptures is basically controlling massive amounts of mist into a form and then stopping the motion of the water molecules.” I looked up at the sky, and pointed. “You could totally cloudshape that cloud up there, just like Storm. It’s just water. She’d use air to move it around, you’d just do it directly.”
“You’re blowing my mind here, Dyna,” he said, contemplating what I was saying. This went far beyond application of his powers. It went to how his powers worked.
“Oh, it gets better. Hand on my forehead.” He paused, then reached out and put his palm there. Staring at him, I began to ‘freeze’ the water in my body, without going through the elimination of icing up. He could feel it all as suddenly every atom in my body locked up, and the sudden loss of molecular motion instantly coated me in ice.
His eyes widened.
I released the lock, and was abruptly motile again, with no ill effects, other than brushing off some hastily condensed frost.
“That’s... like instant cyrogenesis,” he murmured.
“And it gets removed instantly, too. When your power fades, it all breaks instantly, with no harm to the recipient. In other words, it is an instant take-down move, and a way to keep prisoners contained. If you reinforce it, perhaps by putting them in an actual cold environment so there’s no stress to your power, you could extend it for quite some time.”
“I think I need to sit down...” he mumbled.
“You know who Hydro-man is?” I asked.
“Yeah. Guy who is made all of water. Fights Spider-man.” Naturally he’d be interested in someone like that, as their powers were similar.
“You can do everything he can, but he’s only able to control his body. You can project it. So, yeah, you can turn into a watery giant, an amorphous blob, whatever. You’ve been subconsciously avoiding it because of fear... fear of dispersal. It’s the same reason you avoid being steam... it’s too easy to lose parts of yourself and your code, since steam and mist literally go in all directions. But water... you can’t lose yourself in water. You just have to remember how to put yourself back together.”
“Have you tried it?” he asked me.
I held up a hand, which instantly jelled, became transparent, and shimmered around my bones. His lips pursed. “Yes. But, skeleton is a problem.”
“Why is your skeleton a problem?” he had to ask.
“The Hernandez brothers,” I replied calmly. “There are three of them, all mutants. Paco had really hard skin, like armor, but it lost flexibility, and he didn’t have the strength to bend it... and when he did, it cracked, broke, and split. He was a prisoner inside it. Sancho had really strong muscles... so strong they’d rip his tendons apart if he used more than the least amount of strength. He could only move really, really slowly, and if he tensed up, he’d tear himself apart. Garcia had massively strong bones and connective tissue... and didn’t have the strength to overcome them. His whole body was locked up tight, and he could barely move at all... and if he did, the strain would tear his muscles.”
“And you took away their powers?” Bobby asked, nodding understanding. Being a prisoner of your own body because of inefficient powers was an understandable reason to get rid of them.
“No. I used the mindclaw and similar disciplines to show them how to metaconcert and share their powers with one another. With physical contact and the metaconcert, they each have a third of one another’s powers, which makes them plenty strong and tough, and lasts about a day. As they build their power, they are expanding their intrinsic powers into the paths that their brothers’ powers are showing them, slowly building themselves up to the point of each of them having full powers of the others.”
“Wait, are those the Three Amigos?” He looked back at the mansion, where three Mexicans were working on an expansion.
“Yes.” We watched them hoisting hundreds of pounds of wood, tossing them from the first floor to the second with ease and aplomb. “They sometimes go out to do something about gangs and pushers near their homes, but always one by one. They don’t want the gangs to know there’s three of them.”
“And with the Marks, they can talk and coordinate effectively.” He tapped his nose subconsciously, and couldn’t keep a smile off his face.
“Exactly. Keeping it all a secret from their mom is hard, as she’s a proud busybody and blabbermouth who would be so happy to tell everyone her little boys are superheroes...”
Drake sighed. “Yeah, family is hard to think about...” Given his somewhat distant relationship with his own family, he didn’t have the problem. Nobody really knew enough about him to go after his family, who were all normal humans. Even Magneto didn’t stoop so low.
“So, now you know what you are potentially capable of. You just need to get past your subconscious blocks and DO it.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Bobby Drake. I don’t expect you to go around and start pulling water out of cities and murdering millions. I do expect you to go down to the ocean, learn to change between flesh, water, and ice... and then move yourself anywhere across the globe to where water is connected, and learn how to bring people with you, too.”
He blinked in shock. “Whoa...”
“Yeah. It won’t be as fast as Evac, but you can handle a lot more people than he can...”
