Last Resort

[Solomon Latona]

Diana was evil.

Okay so sure, the fact that her little stunt with the ice beads had sent his back into spasms wasn't exactly his first clue. The whole remorseless killing, general disdain for humanity, and the fact that her carelessness had absolutely trashed oh so many of his driving mix tapes had been earlier clues. Then there was the fact that she premeditated everything: Solomon's spur of the moment mischief was countered at a glacial pace, retaliation taken when he would least expect it, revenge being served cold and all that.

He loved her like crazy of course; but it was loathing that was at the forefront of his mind as his futile attempts to wriggle away from the coldness deposited him unceremoniously in the narrow canyon of floor between their twin beds.

"I hate you," he grunted from the carpet, finding himself in a position that didn't hurt but that his spine was very reluctant to release him from; and that he honestly wasn't inclined to voluntarily abandon anyway.

[Diana Latona]

"I know you do." Diana retorted, not bothering to hide the residual amusement she felt.

The small space to the bed she had claimed as hers for the stay at the hotel was crossed and she threw herself onto it as best she could while balancing the two cups of coffee. A beat was taken to stare at the ceiling, take a drink from her own before her hand finally dropped down to Solomon with the other.

"Brought you something. It's shit but it's still hot." She waited until the cup was taken from her hand before she rolled over and repositioned to laying on the bed sideways so she could look down over the edge at Solomon. Her field of vision was only partially obscured by curls of red as she smirked at him.

"So, bad news is I lost my bet." The admission didn't make her smile vanish, didn't even bring out a hint of annoyance. Diana was supposed to lose, though she still had some suspecting belief that Harriman had cheated somehow. "Good news is I doubt we'll have to make good on my end of the deal. Told 'em I left my wallet back here."

Diana eyed the discarded receiver before reaching out to place it back where it belonged. Not that she had any sort of OCD need to fix the problem, it was more that the soft beeping it was making that let you know it was off the hook was starting to grate on her nerves. "What'd dad have to say?" She didn't have to ask who Sol was talking to. There was only one person either of them called sir. "Please tell me I can finally drop this bullshit best friends act. If I have to be nice to these idiots one more time today I'm going to snap."

[Solomon Latona]

"Jeez, Diana," Solomon muttered, stiffly struggling his way back onto his own bed with far too much effort and grunting involved. He tried to slip gracefully onto the mattress, failed, and ended up bouncing a little too far on the springs, landing on his back instead of on his side. He dumped his arms above his head, hoping he could play it off as intentional. "Just chill, okay?"

He stared at the ceiling, wishing he could somehow avoid her question.

What'd dad have to say?

It always came down to that in the end, these days. What did dad want? What were his instructions? What was their bullshit assignment of the week that they wouldn't ever get even a shred of gratitude or recognition for no matter how dangerous it was, or how successful they were? There had been a time when Solomon and Diana had been the masters of their own destiny; a time when the only thing standing between Solomon and what he wanted to do was his ability to come up with a good enough excuse to either trick Diana into agreeing, or distract her long enough to slip away. Now though they were just gophers: a glorified errand boy and errand girl; save this, hunt that; all in the name of family.

The only thing that made their father's instructions worse was when he ordered Solomon to keep them secret: to carry out some hidden agenda that Diana was not privy to. He covered it up as overzealous idiocy, and Diana was used to that; but the fact that he couldn't say I did that because dad told me to ate him up inside, every single time.

He heaved out a sigh. "He says it's time," he muttered, scrubbing a hand over his tired eyes, trying to smooth the fatigue out of his face. "And he wants it big enough to grab media attention. Wants to see his oldest on TV, I guess."

[Diana Latona]

"Well it's a good thing I did my hair this morning isn't it?" Diana couldn't contain the grin that spread across her lips as she got to her feet and practically pounded away the last of the horrible coffee.

Whatever weight had been on her shoulders to keep up appearances had been dropped, thudded to the floor and kicked under the bed for good measure. It was time to do what she and Sol did best - which was be themselves. No more games, no more bullshit figuring things out, no more risking each others necks for means to an end, no more Misses Nice Gal. She rolled her head to the side, felt her neck give a few satisfying crunches near the place where her spine met and then looked to her brother. Who... still looked somewhat miserable. It was enough to knock some of the wind out of her and made her shoulders slump, but just barely.

"Aw hell." The barest traces of concern tugged at the corner of her lips, threatening to wipe the smirk right from her. "Bastard got you worse than you're letting on, didn't he?"

With an annoyed huff she sat down on the edge of the bed Solomon was occupying and tried to give off her best devil-may-care attitude.

"Cheer up, down some Ibruprofen and let's go get you some sweet revenge, okay?"

[Solomon Latona]

Solomon let out a grunt.

"You know painkillers and crap like that screws with my focus," he muttered. "Just -"

With a wince of obvious pain at the protests his back was making to movement, Solomon rolled himself onto his side and dumped himself face down once again, face unintentionally and irredeemably buried in the bedsheets enough to muffle his words and inadvertently cause him to find out what they tasted like. He managed to turn his head to the side, grimacing at what tasted worryingly like an undertone of strawberry behind the whole waxy fabric taste and urge to gag.

"Just ice pack me, okay? And no smugness, or gloating, or -"

His voice trailed off, and he seriously contemplating clamping his teeth down hard in order to stop the train of thought that was thundering it's way out the back of his throat, but it managed to be spoken before he got the chance to intervene.

"That guy went full Vader on me, and you just sat there. That startled rabbit blonde stopped him before you even did a damned thing."

He regretted the unfair words instantly, but there was a note - hell, a symphony - of truth to them. It hadn't come out like an accusation, either: none of the usual sass and confidence that his voice usually conveyed, bur rather one of deflated, almost defeated sadness. It wasn't the voice of someone who was trying to strike a nerve, strike a blow, or make a verbal jab: it was the voice of a brother, who felt that his sister - his twin - had let him down, and was too dumbstruck and disappointed to even argue about it.

"You didn't have my back last night. Helping patch it up now -"

He didn't bother finishing that sentence; the rest more or less went unsaid.

[Diana Latona]

It was times like this Diana wondered if she could use her powers internally, freeze her insides until she couldn't feel a damn thing. It wouldn't do any good, though. She could build a wall of ice 700 feet tall and Solomon would still find some way to just melt on through.

She had this coming though, all things considered. Diana couldn't even be mad at him for calling her out on it. Instead the hatred was placed right where it felt most at home as the mantra of continued failure at her one job in life was dredged up. No matter how she tried to figure it out she couldn't escape the simple fact that she hadn't done anything. There had been a time when Diana would have been on anyone trying to hurt her brother in the blink of eye, make the bastard who dared cross them sorry his parents had even met. When had that changed? When had silence and tiny pricks of resentment replaced carefree laughter and an inseparable bond?

Diana knew the answer. It was a three letter word that began and ended with the letter D.

Her throat had closed up on itself and wouldn't let her even attempt any words as the tiny distance between them was closed. Her hands pressed through his shirt, seeking out the mess of bunched up muscles before she slowly focused and felt the palms of her hands becoming as numb as she wished the rest of her could feel.

"You know I wouldn't let anything really happen to you, right?" Diana knew it sounded like she was dead inside as she softly asked a question that she wasn't sure didn't need a reply anymore. There was more she wanted to say but it was bitten back, buried and with any luck would never see the light of day.

[Solomon Latona]

Whatever Solomon had been hoping his comment would achieve, it wasn't this. He wanted fire, he wanted pyrotechnics, he wanted to scream and shout so that he could screw up his frustrations into tiny little cannon balls and blast them out of his throat behind a rapidly expanding wave of probably poorly chosen words. He wanted to tackle the matter head on, deal with it like a wildfire and just incinerate the whole horrible mess so that everything was burned back to the unshakeable bedrock that was the two of them. Underneath it all, no matter what crap was piled on top of them, that foundation was always there.

But sometimes it didn't work out that way. Sometimes it was like trying to fight a glacier with a flamethrower: the tiniest dent did nothing to stop the slow but unyielding advance of ice. It was in Diana's nature, she couldn't change it, and he didn't want to. Even so, it terrified him: a million infernos could rage without harm, but a single glacier could carve out chunks of bedrock with ease. It might take a few hundred years, but once the damage was done, there was no fixing it.

Solomon had read a book once; admittedly it was a book aimed at children, but he'd remembered it's contents none the less. An Illustrated Introduction To Norse Mythology. He'd loved that damned book. In it, he'd read about the way the Vikings thought the world had been formed. Their view of the world stuck a land of ice to the north, and a land of fire to the south: where the two met, the melt water formed a huge ocean in the middle of which Midgard floated. There'd been stuff about giants and carving people out of wood and all manner of weird crap that had shuffled out of his brain, but the fire and ice thing had stuck around. It felt like that between him and Di sometimes: like an ocean had slowly been separating them further and further apart ever since they were kids.

No points for guessing who the jackass island floating between them was.

"I know you wouldn't." His voice was as forlorn as hers: but as the words made it out, they brought with it a sense of relief; a tiny hiss of steam fire and ice met on equal terms; an iceberg breaking away from the north, and drifting to the south as some tiny ice cube peace offering.

A faint glimmer of a smile flickered onto his lips. "Bitch."

[Diana Latona]

A ghost of a smile was pulled from the well she'd cast herself down into. "Jerk."

Just like that the sudden tension in the room was chipped away. It was still there, lingering on the edges and threatening to once more creep in and wedge itself between the two but for now it had been driven back. Maybe one day they'd manage to smash it all to hell, to go back to how things used to be or maybe some new version that was just as unshakeable; Diana just hoped they managed to do it before they wore each other down until they were just shadows of themselves.

It was a problem for another day, though. For now all Diana could do was begin formulating ways to make amends that would slap a band-aid on the slowly seeping wound their lives had become. Thankfully, the same thing that had run them through had presented her with a perfect opportunity. She almost felt bad for the guy they had been aimed at.

[Tom Harriman]

Meal with Alice, Take 3.

Guilt squirmed in Tom's stomach as he weaved his way through the golf club back to the table that he and Alice had claimed. The hushed mutterings of last night's exploits had circulated through the room via convection, and now everyone was making that extra little effort to either stay well clear of him, or to stare at him from what they considered to be a safe distance and make him feel as uncomfortable as was humanly - mutantly - possible. He couldn't blame them, and didn't. If he'd watched a guy Force choke someone into a table, he'd probably be a little wary too. He just wished they'd stop.

Still, as his gaze settled on Alice patiently waiting for him, a little of the weight that kept weighing on his mind and conscious evaporated away, and he even found himself on the brink of a smile. He put a little effort into encouraging it, and it blossomed full force as Alice glanced in his direction, caught his eye, and flashed a smile of his own. The guilt was still there - as was the paranoia that the karma accountant for the cosmos had made a grievous error - but right now he didn't care.

He set the tray - which the barman had given him without question when he'd asked, presumably because it seemed like the only way to stop the monstrous mutant from mercilessly attacking him - on the table, and distributed the glasses.

"One strawberry martini," he explained as he set the glass in front of Alice, steadfastly refusing to call it a strawtini no matter what the menu said, "And one cloudy lemonade -" His hand delved into his breast pocket, and brandished the contents. "- with straw." There was a pun about straws and strawberries in there somewhere, but as his gaze stumbled onto her eyes once again, he completely forgot how to think.

One stray notion crossed his mind, and his smile faltered; he pulled his eyes away and busied himself with the not all that complicated but he was going to give it his full concentration anyway task of sitting down, making himself comfortable, and finding out whether the long island iced tea was as good as the barman claimed it would be.

By the time his eyes made an attempt to look at Alice again, they only made it as far as Alice's hands, resting on the table; he reached out, resting his atop hers.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, still not quite managing to make eye contact again.

[Alice Kelly]

Awkward would have been the nice term to use for all the sidelong glances they were receiving, yet somehow Alice felt more at ease than she had the previous evening. Maybe it was just the fact she was wearing her own clothing, though Alice had the sneaking suspicion it had more to do with everything her and Tom had talked about. It didn't matter what anyone else thought about her or him, the fact they completely knew just how they felt about each other was something that no amount of glaring could ever touch, never bring down.

Which was why it tugged at her to see Tom forcing smiles and how the touch on her hand was anything but strong. Alice turned her hand over under his, letting her fingers wrap delicately around Tom's. The smallest squeeze of his hand was given in poor substitute for the fact she wanted to throw her arms around him and hold him to her until he was back to his typical confident self.

"Don't be." She tried to force as much reassurance and caring into the two words as possible. "Just think, when we get back home this whole thing will just seem like some sort of strange dream. Only, the good parts weren't just in your head and won't suddenly change."

[Tom Harriman]

Something twinged in Tom's chest; a smile tugged at half of his mouth despite the frown weighing down on his brow.

"Why would I dream about this?" he asked, the faintest ghost of a chuckled sigh creeping out beneath his words. "Nothing I could ever imagine could ever be even half as perfect as sitting here, being here with you, and knowing that when I woke up this morning after falling asleep with you in my arms, you were still there when I opened my eyes. You have no idea how many times I've woken up expecting that only to find out it was all a dream, and -"

He tripped over his words. "Not that I-"

Flood flushed to Tom's face, and he could feel his ears slowly burning as his smile turned distinctly nervous. His hands shifted, gathering hers inside his so his fingers could gently stroke hers, and with all the effort he could muster he forced his gaze to meet with hers again, dove head-first into the eyes he knew he'd drown in.

"I don't want this to seem like it was all just a dream, Alice. You're already a dream come true."

[Alice Kelly]

Alice could feel herself fidget slightly under the barrage of compliments, wondering what would happen first: Would Tom eventually run out of things to say or would she finally get used to hearing them? Watching him become flustered didn't help the situation either and not for the first time since they had left Los Angeles, Alice wished the two of them could simply be home. Romantic meals were nice and all, but all she really wanted was to just curl up on the sofa next to him and playfully argue over who would get control over the remote control.

All she could do in the meantime was let yet another shy smile appear as she glanced away and back up at him, unsure exactly where to finish.

"Then, why don't we just forget everyone else is here? It's just the two of us then, nothing else matters." A small laugh left her, "Well, for the moment at least."

No doubt Kat was wandering around grumbling over having been excluded once more. Alice had tried to explain the whole make up for last night thing and while Kat had seemed to at least accept the concept, she certainly hadn't entirely seemed thrilled over the prospect of being left alone on what was supposed to be a vacation for the three of them. It lingered in the back of Alice's mind like a faucet slowly dripping water into a sink. Maybe she would offer to take Katrina to a Girls-Only Disneyland trip when they got back. Then again, considering what had happened there recently...

Alice pushed the thoughts from her head and let her eyes meet Tom's once more, a small intake of breath was taken as she stumbled over something else to say that could even begin to reflect the things she felt for him. She was sure it didn't need to be said, but it certainly couldn't hurt.

Then, suddenly there was movement behind Tom, a flash of red, a cocky smile, and the unformed words caught in her throat as she looked past him towards the door.

"Oh no..."

[Solomon Latona]

"Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention please."

The golf club bar and lounge was peppered with ambient noise, background chatter and the clinks of cutlery and glasses, and yet Solomon's voice swept it aside with ease, like fire melting through paper. Conversations curled into crisp and blackened silence, crumbling like ash as everyone's attention was drawn towards him. There was no magic at work here, no hypnotic superpower: just a man speaking loudly with a voice of authority, giving them no choice but to listen.

A small surge of smugness and swagger tugged a smile onto his lips. He held it at bay, barely.

"Please leave your belongings, and make your way in a calm and orderly fashion to the nearest exit -"

He snapped his fingers, and a dancing flame of fire burst into life at his fingertips. Slowly it coiled around his fingers like a serpent, expanding and growing like that game on his cell phone until, a few brief seconds later, it coiled and coalesced into a fist sized ball of flame held casually in the palm of his hand. His gaze settled on Harriman, at the pensive look on the Doctor's face as he twisted in his chair to watch. Solomon allowed his smile to flourish.

"- a fire has been reported in the building."

Without warning Solomon reeled back, wound up his arm and pitched, sending the fireball hurtling across the room.

[Tom Harriman]

Tom reacted on instinct more than anything else. His hand snatched at his drink, and he was only half-way to his feet when he launched it into the air, his powers converting the glass and it's contents into a fast moving projectile that rocketed towards the incoming fire. The two collided above a vacant table; glass shattered and the fire erupted with a hint of alcoholic blue before the combination burned itself into almost nothingness, a few tiny licks of flame clinging to the fragments of glass as they reigned down onto the tablecloth beneath.

Now the crowds didn't know who to look at, but they were still there, curiosity and idiocy preventing them from following Solomon's sage advice.

"This is between you and me, Solomon," Tom replied, frustration snarling away at the back of his accent, scarcely kept at bay.

His senses were acutely aware of his surroundings, of all the innocent bystanders and most importantly of Alice; he took a few steps forward, inserting him between Alice and Solomon's line of fire. He felt his hands curl into fists, felt his muscles tense in readiness, felt the back of his mind curse and lament the absence of the accoutrements he was so used to having with him in fights such as this.

Felt the icy grip of fear around his heart as he recalled what had happened the last time he'd faced off against a pyrokinetic, sense-memories sparking off in his mind. He wrestled them down, snuck a hand into his pocket, dug out a fistful of coins.

He narrowed his eyes at Solomon.

"How about we take this outside?"

[Diana Latona]

"How about... No."

Gone was the lilting charm of amusement that Diana had been throwing around since they'd arrived on the scene. So were the apologetic eyes and sweet behavior that had been donned like some sort of costume for the ordeal. The woman that now came to a stop at Sol's side was nothing short of stoic, a hint of malice edging in on a cold stare that focused directly on Harriman. Diana could really give a shit less about the rest of the people in the room, anyone who had been stupid enough to ignore her brother's warning would just become another casualty of a war they'd been fighting for the last few years. Not a war of their choosing - but then again, when were they?

A small flick of her wrist was the only movement from the right side of her body as the air surrounding Harriman's feet suddenly dropped in temperature. Just like the dirty trick she pulled on Sol, it wasn't so much the air being manipulated but the minute traces of water that lingered, pulled from whatever sources available. The final shift from water to ice was sudden as frost shot up from the ground and wrapped itself around the man's feet, trying its damnedest to gain more substance and stab itself through the fabric of his pants and into his ankles. It wasn't entirely successful, but it would be enough to to keep the bastard from moving quickly.

"See that's the thing, it isn't just between you and Sol here. You fuck with one Latona and you get the entire package deal. Two for the price of one."

Diana's hands raised and another flick, this time from both, brought on another use of her powers. It was something she'd perfected over time and damn had she had a lot of time to do it. The sound of chairs pushing back as the smarter people decided now would be a good time to bail covered the small cracking noises as two shards of ice began to form in her hands, taking on the shape of daggers with a rather threatening sharpened edge to them. Nice little thing she'd learned, keeping the 'blades' frozen even as they sliced through warm flesh. She hadn't needed to use such a thing in a long damn time, but for Harriman, for what he'd done to Sol, for what she hadn't done earlier - It was worth it.

[Tom Harriman]

Tom felt the ice constrict around his feet; that was nothing compared to the weight of realisation settling on his shoulders.

Mutants and siblings were things he understood well: those who fell in the overlap of that Venn diagram weren't just bonded by shared genes and shared parents; they shared oppression, they shared prejudice, and they stood together against a world uncomfortable with their very existence. No matter what frustration Jason or Katrina inspired, he could not imagine a single instance where he would not rush to their aid and stand beside him: they'd stand against the world as siblings, just as Solomon and Diana were trying to do.

That two mutants had gone so long without revealing themselves was no surprise: secrecy was often the only defense a mutant had. But something about it stirred Tom's suspicions. The sheer convenience of Diana stumbling across Alice and Katrina in the spa while at the exact same moment Solomon struck up a conversation with Tom at the bar, a handful of weeks after Tom's research and it's mutant slant had been spread across news networks throughout the State. Serendipity and coincidence were powerful forces, and correlation did not prove causality; but the realm of people was far less adherent to logic and rules than the realm of physics.

Tom could not help feeling tested, twisted, and provoked. Solomon's transformation From casual conversationalist to inconsiderate antagonist was far too profound for alcohol to be the explanation; no amount of alcohol could explain that, particularly not for pyrokinetics, whose very nature usually burned away the negative affects of alcohol unless they practically drowned in it. At least one persona had been faked and staged, and Tom rapidly began to suspect that acting was a family business.

"I get the impression that I'm the one being fucked with."

His eyes narrowed, accusation rumbling beneath his words like a rip-tide beneath waves.

"You know who I am; what I do. You knew before you met me. This is all some elaborate scheme to, what? Antagonise me? Humiliate me? Discredit my work? Give all these innocent bystanders another reason to hate and fear what we are?" His mind raced, conclusions formed and run with before his mind even finished comprehending them. "That's why you waited. That's why you're coming after me now, instead of trying to defend yourself last night."

He strained with his feet, trying and failing to fracture the ice. His eyes turned on Diana. "You could have stopped me. One wave of your hand and last night would never have happened. But no, you needed it to. You needed to let Solomon push me over the edge to test me. Gauge me. Decide if you thought you were enough to take me on. And once you did, you found the best location for your public spectacle: as many witnesses to watch and disapprove as you could possibly get."

"You left Solomon to get hurt without doing a single thing to even try and save him." He let out a grunt of disgust. "Some sister you are."

[Alice Kelly]

Not again. Those were the first words that came to mind and they just continued to repeat themselves as Alice watched the scene unfold before her. Like the ice that apparently had trapped Tom, she found herself likewise frozen, but more out of shock and dismay than any mutant intervention. Her mouth had opened to protest, to find some way to put a stop to it before it escalated but words were lost to the tumble of ideas running through her mind. Alice had read enough news articles and watched enough television to know that not everyone was as well meaning about their abilities as Tom and those he worked with were, it was naive to think that there weren't those out there who were on the other end of the spectrum. If Alice was honest with herself, she felt more disappointed that she hadn't seen it coming, that she had chosen to believe despite everything that the two siblings had been genuinely good people. Their casual disregard for the possibility of harming everyone around them had obliterated any hope of that, though.

Alice slowly pushed herself away from the table and stood up, her eyes constantly moving from Tom to each of the aggressors. "You... You don't have to do this. You can just walk away. It isn't too late."

She wasn't sure why she was trying to reason with any of them, and sadly Alice half wondered if the statement might have been meant for Tom as well since his remarks to Diana certainly didn't seem to have been made with the intent on diffusing the situation. Not that she was certain he was looking to get into a fight, it was more of that awful feeling that he was trying to draw all the attention to himself and ever since the night before Alice had made a silent vow to herself to never let him shoulder his burdens alone if she could help it.

[Tom Harriman]

Tom clenched his teeth together, the muscles bunching in his jaw.

"Yes it is, Alice."

It wasn't anger that spoke, despite the cutting words he'd thrown in Diana's direction. Tom had been in this situation far too many times to think he could simply back away and all would be well. Powers or not, people like these two were all the same: spoiling for a fight, and convinced that they had strength in their superior numbers. It didn't matter if it was a golf club in New Mexico, the streets at night in Los Angeles, or back during his first few weeks of training at Sandhurst; a fight was going to happen, and the only choice Tom had was whether he'd be facing them when it started, or if he'd walk away and give them a free shot at his back.

"But there's still time for you, and everyone else to get safely outside."

Tom looked at her, trying so hard to say with his eyes what he didn't have time to say with his mouth. He wanted her safe; needed her safe. Needed everyone else still standing and gawking to be safe, despite their obvious lack of common sense. Manipulated or not, this was a mess he'd allowed to happen; a trap that he'd blundered into, put himself - put Alice - in danger. Whatever happened in the next ten minutes, he would be the only one he'd allow to be put at risk trying to clean his mess up.

"Please, Alice. Get everyone outside."

[Solomon Latona]

A smirk formed on Solomon's features, but it was malice rather than mirth that glistened in his eyes.

"You heard the man, Alice."

Once again, flames formed at his fingertips, dancing and swirling around his hand as they grew in intensity. This time however they roamed further, the nondescript trail of fire growing larger still, becoming more sharply defined, sprouting wings, evolving a tail, forming angular, serpentine features. It climbed over his shoulders, wrapped itself around his torso, the sound of burning air transformed into a slowly intensifying rumble. His body moved, working it's way through motions that almost seemed like a parody of tai chi: as his arms snapped forward, the dragon of pure fire pounced forth from his arms, and a single word uttered from his lips with almost glee.

"Run."

[Tom Harriman]

Every barrier Tom had ever constructed to keep his anger at bay was smashed in a single blow. Like a broken levee, every dark thought, suppressed feeling, and enraged reflex burst forth like a torrent. Every angry memory from last night and from before, every broken heart, broken promise, snapped nerve, and lost temper flooded into his mind with a deafening roar.

And then, like hope left behind in Pandora's box, a single thought floated through his mind; a glimmer of something good dancing across the blackness of emotions like the Northern Lights across a winter sky. Alice's voice played through his mind, and suddenly the roar turned to silence; rage gave way to serenity.

I love you. And I don't want that to go away.

Tom swept his dark thoughts together; compressed them into the tightest bundle that his mental strength could muster. He gripped it tight and tore it in two, forcing each half through his shoulders, past his elbows, and hurling from his outstretched hands with a shouted exhaled breath.

A blast wave raced charged outwards, spreading out across the cone his hands defined. Tables leapt upwards in it's wake, flipping like dominos into an unfurling barricade that smashed into Solomon's conjured dragon, the avalanche of furniture stampeding on towards the twins.

Tom staggered from exhurtion, his frozen boots the only reason he managed to keep his footing. Even so he mustered a smile, and cast it in Alice's direction. "I got this, princess. Go."