It had grown quiet inside the passenger bay as they waited for some word on how Kitty was doing.  It was all Pete could do not to get up and start pacing around, or light up a cigarette, but every time his fingers so much as twitched toward his shirt pocket Illyana shot him a glare.  He could tell something was up the moment Drake’s face had shifted into a deep, worried frown, but Frost had airily sidestepped every demand for an explanation, and now even she had fallen completely silent as she followed Kitty’s latest struggle to solidify herself.

“She’s done it,” Emma suddenly said, face not even changing expression.  Everyone else, however, permitted themselves a relieved smile toward each other.  Including him.  Not that he’d had any doubts that Pryde could, if she got stubborn enough, but it was a relief to hear it confirmed.  “Teleport us over, Ms. Rasputin.”

Illyana’s eyes flicked over toward Drake, who was still sitting with a vapid expression.  “Shouldn’t we tell Bobby first?” she asked.

“I’ll make certain he knows when it’s appropriate.  Now do please hurry.  We haven’t got much time.”

Despite the crispness of Frost’s voice, Illyana gave no further protest.  Instead, she looked over at Pete and Ali and said, “We’ll be back before you know it,” and with that, vanished along with Drake and Frost in another of her signature stepping circles.

Pete wished it were that simple.  Frost still hadn’t told him what part she had in mind for Drake in all this, and he had a strong suspicion it wasn’t something he’d like if he knew.  Whatever it was she wanted him to do was likely to be dangerous, and it didn’t sit well with him to just wait around helplessly while Kitty’s life hung in the balance.

“You’re pacing,” Ali informed him, and he paused as he felt her hand gently catch him by his own. 

The lanky Brit looked down at himself in an almost daze.  “Hadn’t even realized I’d gotten up,” he mused.

“She’ll be okay,” Ali assured him, giving his hand the tiniest squeeze, which he returned without even thinking about it.

“I know,” he admitted.  “It’s just quiet, yeah?  I hate when things are quiet.”

As if that were some sort of invitation, John suddenly called back to them from the cockpit.  “Pete, you might want to come have a look at this.”

There was a serious edge to John’s voice, and Pete knew he wouldn’t have interrupted at a time like this unless it was important, so the chain-smoking spy stepped into the cockpit.  A moment later Ali joined him, peering curiously at the viewscreen.  “What’s up, John?” Pete asked.

“Seems we’ve acquired an audience,” he informed them, inclining his head toward the viewscreen.  Sure enough, there was a massive fleet of oddly shaped spacecraft in the distance heading toward them.  Their hulls were a heavy grey color that would have blended into the darkness of space around them were it not for the array of lights ringing each one, giving them the appearance of ghostly vessels sailing a haunted sea.

“I’ll say,” Ali remarked.  “And me without my microphone.”

“These the Tamabouki you mentioned?” Pete asked in a grim voice.

John gave a slight nod.  “They are indeed.  And they’re hailing us.”

“Right.  Let’s say hello, then.”

Nodding again, the Skrull Beatle moved his hands over the controls and the viewscreen changed to an interior display of the bridge of what seemed to be a very large command ship, based on the number of crew arranged within his range of sight. 

Whatever Pete had been expecting the Tamabouki to look like, this wasn’t it.  They were a wispy, thin people, and their yellow-on-white military uniforms only enhanced that aspect about them.  Their skin was a leafy green and their heads seemed to grow right out of their shoulders as if God had forgotten to give them necks.  Only their mouths and solid black eyes made it clear where it began.  Instead of hair, a layered crown of darker green skin topped their heads in a way that reminded Pete of the sort of things his Mum would pile on his plate when he was a lad and tell him horrible lies about how they were good for him.

“Wait, seriously?” Ali whispered with an incredulous snort.  “These are them?”

“What were you expecting? Sleestacks?” Pete whispered back before motioning for John to get on with answering their call.

“’Ello, there,” John said with his friendliest smile.  “No need to bring everyone out, mate.  We’re just passing through.”

The alien in the center of the display, their Captain from the looks of it, did not appear pleased with the greeting.  It raised its slender, ropelike arms and crossed them in front of itself.  “Unidentified Skrull vessel,” he said, though it was difficult to tell if the Captain was male or female, and its mouth unhinged as it spoke in a way that was unnervingly similar to that one Muppet that was always helping the crazy doctor.  “We are the Tamabouki Naval Forces and you are trespassing in our system.  Our orders are to eliminate the Breakworld missile as soon as it comes within firing range.  You will depart immediately or be destroyed along with it.”

Under his breath, Pete quietly said, “Ah, bugger.”

* * * * * * *

As he held Kitty’s hand and watched her strain to cross limits her body was never meant to endure, Bobby let his smile fade.   She was doing her part, but he wasn’t anywhere near as confident as he’d pretended that he’d be able to do his.  Taking himself from ice to vapor and back again was one thing.  Taking Kitty along…

There were far, far too many things that could go wrong, and his mind was adding to the list with ever increasing speed. 

“Emma, how the hell do I do this?” he pleaded, hoping for once she’d actually provide some sort of helpful answer and wondering how, exactly, he was even supposed to know when to try.   Would doing it on the astral plane even work, or was this, as Kitty’d suggested, just some last ditch effort to make her think…

“Don’t be ridiculous.”  Emma’s voice cut through his mind’s frantic scrambling, tinged with more than a little exasperation and annoyance.  “We certainly didn’t come all this way just so I could listen to you panic.  I’ll move your body into position; you simply need to focus on the task at hand.  It will respond accordingly.”

“But how?”  he demanded.  “Emma, I…”

“Stop overanalyzing, and do what comes naturally, Robert.  Think small.”

“What?”

“ NOW,” she ordered, just as he heard Kitty’s voice confirm the time had come.  Squeezing her hand and trusting that between Illyana and Emma his body was where it needed to be, he closed his eyes and shifted his awareness inward.

He understood how this worked, for him.  Had explained it, even, and been gratified by the look of surprise on Hank’s furry face.  Ice was composed of crystals, each of which contained the innate knowledge of how to reconstruct the whole.   He could feel them there as he made the switch to his ice form.  So long as he had one, he could make this work for himself.

Kitty, though…Kitty was flesh and blood.  And while flesh and blood was largely composed of water…

“Bobby?” he heard her say, her voice pleading and strained, and knew he didn’t have any time left. 

Biting down hard on his lip, he pulled.

At first, it felt like nothing so much as the time he’d extracted the fluid from the body of Kurt’s insane, demonic relative, and he pushed the thought aside as his stomach gave a lurch at the thought.  No.  There was more to it than that.  There had to be.  Letting instinct take over, he pushed past just the liquid, latching on to the physical substance that was Kitty and transposing that as well, changing the solid substance to liquid on a molecular level and pulling it with him into the air around them.

Think small, Emma had said.  He wasn’t sure it got much smaller than this.

He pulled his consciousness together, and felt rather than heard Emma’s confirmation that she was safeguarding Kitty’s.  Slightly reassured, he reached out for the water vapor in the atmosphere, and began mentally sorting his from hers by some instinctive criteria he could understand but would never be able to verbalize.

There was another step, though, as Emma reminded him in a burst of thought his mind could comprehend but not, strictly speaking, interpret as language.  Even as he pulled his own body back together, he filtered the alien substances from Kitty’s, leaving behind anything his mind didn’t specifically recognize as her and replacing it with pure, extraneous vapor from the air around them.  And painstakingly began reassembling the pieces, recreating Kitty Pryde from the smallest possible building blocks while letting the alien metal that had pervaded her body drift away.

There was something he was still forgetting, he reflected, tightening his hands around Kitty’s arms as  they both reshaped into a transitional something more solid and then into flesh and blood.  But given he could hear someone laughing - Illyana, he thought, but he wasn’t certain and didn’t have the time or energy to turn and see – he wasn’t too worried about it.   There were apparently no longer on the astral plane, and Kitty…

Was naked, he realized as he opened his eyes for the first time.  He groaned, and was about to apologize when he noticed Illyana’s laughter had cut short with a gasp and he realized there was a considerably more critical problem.

Kitty wasn’t breathing.  Or, more accurately, was gasping for breath as if she couldn’t get enough in, her eyes wide with panic. 

“There is, you know, a simple remedy for that, as you yourself learned under similar circumstances,” Emma observed drily, a touch of humor in her mental tone.  “And while it may seem trite, a story tale solution wouldn’t be entirely inappropriate, given the circumstances.”

Reminding himself that Piotr would probably be too relieved to have Kitty back to do too much damage, Bobby wrapped his arms around her to keep her upright and pressed his lips against hers, blowing air into her just as Mystique had done for him the first time he’d tried this trick on his own.  After a few long seconds that seemed an eternity, her breathing restabilized and she wrapped her arms around him in turn, letting their contact drift into a soft kiss. 

They lingered like that for a moment before he pulled back a little and grinned crookedly, only the telltale warmth of his face betraying the fact he wasn’t quite as unaffected as he seemed.  Kitty, not breathing or otherwise, was incredibly snuggly up close and personal.   Something that his own lack of clothing was beginning to make entirely too obvious for comfort, and that was totally inappropriate even to think about under the circumstances.

It was sort of hard not to, though.  Hoping she wouldn’t notice, and that Emma would keep her mouth shut for once, he met Kitty’s eyes and grinned.  “Told you you could do it,” he said softly.

“Hold it, who told who?” she countered, then laughed breathlessly and hugged him again.   “Thank you.”

“Ahem.  Do you suppose we could bother the two of you to untangle so we might determine whether or not Katherine suffered any ill effects?” Emma interjected, an unaccustomed hint of amusement in her voice.

Chuckling as his face grew still warmer, Bobby pulled back, only to clamp his arm around Kitty’s back as she stumbled and nearly fell.

“Whoa.  Dizzy,” she whispered, then grinned crookedly over at Emma before leaning in against his side.  “I think you’re going to have to settle for partially untangled, at least until I get my balance back.   I am not lying back down on that floor.”  She wrinkled her nose at it, then shrugged.  “Otherwise I feel pretty much okay.  A whole lot better, anyway.”   She paused, then looked from him to Emma plaintively.  “I don’t suppose anyone thought to bring along that cheeseburger he owes me, huh?  Or at least a change of clothes?  I seem to have left mine behind.”

“Sorry,” Bobby murmured with a sheepish grin and a shrug.  As things to forget went, clothing was pretty minor, though he had to admit he wished he had some at the moment, too. “I’m afraid I didn’t really pack for the rescue.”

“Here,” another voice said roughly, and Bobby felt the edge of a blanket brush against his shoulder.  Turning, he watched as Illyana wrapped a blanket in around Kitty’s shoulders, then stepped to his side and handed him its twin.  “Need help with that?” she teased.

“Nah, I’ve got it,” he assured her, grinning as he wrinkled his nose at the sorceress in question.  Before he could make any move to try to don the blanket, however, he felt Kitty turn abruptly and tightened his arm to stabilize her.

“Illyana?  Oh my God, you really are here!”

“You did well, Robert,” Emma said as he watched Kitty nearly dive into Illyana’s arms, much to the other girl’s surprise.

Bobby just smiled as he wrapped the blanket around his waist.  He was bone tired, and felt as if he’d just fought Apocalypse’s horsemen singlehandedly.  But maybe, just this once, he’d done okay.

* * * * * * *

“I’m telling you, this is a mistake you’re making.”

Despite the words themselves, Pete spoke mildly, as if he were warning a friend who was deep in his cups not to get a tattoo rather than addressing a hostile fleet of aliens prepared to open fire on the bullet and everything in its vicinity.  He seemed perfectly at ease, leaning back in the copilot’s seat with his feet propped on the edge of the control panel in front of him. 

John and Ali had similarly relaxed expressions, though the Skrull Beatle was constantly tapping away at the ship controls while Pete spoke with the fleet commander.  Of everyone in the cockpit, the only one who was clearly displeased with the Tamabouki’s intent was Lockheed, who stood perched on the backrest of John’s chair like a purple, leathery gargoyle, wings curls behind and a low hiss rumbling from out of him along with the occasional gout of smoke through his nostrils.

The split display before them showed the bridge of the capital ship on one half, the other serving as a wide shot of the armada itself.  The Commander standing in the center of the bridge display was the polar opposite of Pete’s casual posture, back stiff and leafy brows furrowed in a grim blend of regimented ceremony and thinly veiled irritation with the uncouth Englishman’s uncooperative behavior.  “All threats which breech the limits of our system shall be eliminated,” he reasserted in a voice that brooked no argument.  For an advanced species, they seemed terribly unable to let go of certain ideas.  Before Pete could respond, he proudly added, “We were prepared to deal with the Annihilation Wave, and we shall destroy this Breakworld projectile as well.”

“Annihilation what?” Pete said, arching one eyebrow in confusion.  “I’m a bit behind on the cosmic gossip.  Care to elaborate on that one?”

“This is not a joke!” the Commander snapped.

Pete crossed his arms and leaned a little further back into his chair.  “It isn’t? Really?” he drawled.  “See, I thought there was a reason none o’ us were laughing, and that must be it.  I’m glad you cleared that up for us.”

His sarcasm seemed to bring the Commander back to himself as his expression once again became menacingly inscrutable.  “You have your warning.  Leave the area or be destroyed.”

“I told you, that’s a bad idea,” Pete said, shaking his head.  “We’ve been working on the problem ourselves, you know.  But you go ahead and waste your ammunition if you really want.”

The sound of a low sigh had Pete lifting his eyes to see Ali looking down at him, half a smirk playing at the corner of her mouth.  “Diplomacy wasn’t your strongest subject in Spy School, was it?” she asked curiously.

“I can be diplomatic,” he assured her, to which he got a dubious snort in response.  “I can.  No point in wasting it on a tosser who won’t even listen, yeah?”  Glancing back at John, Pete lowered his voice and said, “You’re sure they can’t do it?”

John responded with a slow, relaxed shake of his head.  “Like I said, they were trouble, but not advanced enough to be a real threat.  Otherwise the Empire would have razed their homeworld to an orb of cinders.  The ship’s sensors aren’t finding anything that could really dent that Breakworld metal, even without whatever spell’s protecting it.”

So that was it, then.  Figuring it was best to give the others some kind of warning, Pete searched out with his mind, hoping Frost was still keeping up that telepathic link.  “You lot might want to brace yourselves,” Pete sent to her.  “The natives are in a spear-throwing mood.”

“I assume the negotiations went poorly then,” came her response almost before he’d finished.  “Hardly surprising, given your record.”

“Well, I suppose I could have just mooned them,” he retorted.

“That would have undoubtedly failed to surprise me as well.”

“You sure you don’t feel like just teleporting on back here, then?  Things might get unpleasant for you when they open fire. ”

“That simply wouldn’t do, I’m afraid, Agent Wisdom,” Frost sent after a moment’s pause.  “If they truly can’t harm the bullet, it remains our task to work out how to prevent their world from suffering the same fate intended for Earth.  Even if they don’t seem to much deserve it.”

“Thought that’s what you’d say.  Just watch yourselves, then.  We’ll do what we can here.”

“Alien projectile is in range, Sir,” one of the crewmembers broke in.

The Commander’s eyes sunk into his face a bit, another sign Pete had taken for growing irritation.  “You have been warned,” he repeated as he folded his hands behind his back.  He turned to face his crew and issued his orders.  “Forward squadron. Open fire.”

Almost instantly, the other side of the viewscreen a thousand lights brightened the display as the front line of ships charged up their laser banks and missile bays.  A second later a massive arc of radiant bolts dwarfed even that, the energy streaking from one ship to the next in a fiery web.  And then it was gone, leaving the ships to float in place, engines still running and none firing on the bullet.

Back on the viewscreen, the Commander stared at his own display, obviously stunned for a moment.  “What…?” At the sight of the bullet’s inexorable charge toward his fleet, he whirled around and bellowed, “Evasive maneuvers! All ships, get out of the path of that thing!”

In a desperate flurry of movement, the armada opened out like an expanding corona, all but the battleships at the lead, which remained where they were, apparently oblivious to both the oncoming bullet and the Commander’s orders.  It took only a moment for the bullet to reach them and smash through the thin screen of alien spacecraft.  Dozens exploded on impact.  Others crumpled like wads of paper and exploded a second or two later.  Still more scattered about like billiard balls, vanishing into the darkness of space or colliding with other nearby ships unharmed by the bullet.

It was hard for Pete not to wince as the scout ship followed the giant bullet through the mass, the evidence of its passing all around them and what vessels remained outside the wake still floating uselessly.  Behind them, the mass of ships that had escaped the energy backlash reversed direction, closed ranks and moved in to pursue.

The scene on the bridge of the Tamabouki capital ship was a frantic mob of reports and rushing bodies as everyone tried to make sense of what had just happened.  One voice, however, was clear enough to register over the veiwscreen’s transmitter.  “Nobody from the forward squadron is responding, sir! They’re just floating there!”

The Commander turned toward Pete, anger, confusion and a little fear evident on his cylindrical face.  “What do you know of this?” he demanded.

“Tried to warn you,” Pete said, dropping his blithe expression and suddenly matching the alien’s seriousness.  “The same sort of thing happened when it was headed toward our planet.  So…” Leaning forward, the dark-haired man glared directly at the Commander.  “Are you ready to try working together, then?”

A heavy silence hung for several long moments before the Commander finally responded.  “What do you suggest?” he said in a voice that was very close to sounding defeated.

“Well-”

“Can you’re ship’s weapons project sound waves?” Ali suddenly interrupted, face lighting up as if a bulb had switched on over her head. 

The Commander gave her a surprised, but curt nod.  “All our battleships can be configured to deliver high-intensity sonics,” he confirmed.

Pete’s eyes made a little twitch as they snapped up to her, realization dawning on him.  Turning back to the viewscreen, he forced a smile and said, “Hang on, mate.  We’ll just be a moment.” Reaching over toward John’s control panel, he hit one of the buttons and the display switched back to a full forward view of the bullet and the stars in the distance.  Pete immediately rounded back on the woman behind him and said, “Have you gone mental, Ali?”

“You know it can work, Pete,” Ali replied, nonplussed.

“It could sodding kill you,” he insisted, dropping his feet off the control panel and standing up to face her.  “I didn’t come all the way out here just to let someone else push themselves past their limit trying to stop that thing.”

Ali remained stubbornly unmoved.  “It’s sweet of you to worry, really, but I can do this.  And besides, chances are even if you’re right I’m not going to stay dead.”

Pete’s scowl grew deeper as his brow furrowed with discontent.  She had a point, but not one he cared to think about.  The first time he’d ever seen her was as a corpse, and she’d come back from a fatal blow at least twice since.  Death wasn’t something she tended to keep for very long.  Still… “You still don’t know why that works, Ali,” he reminded her.  “It’s not worth the risk.”

“Then you’d better think of something else that will work fast, Pete.  We’ve only got an hour, maybe less before it gets to that planet, and this is our best shot at stopping it.”

For a moment Pete considered arguing the matter a little more, but he knew she was right.  He drew himself up, but at the apex, let it collapse into a sigh.  Adjusting the collar of his trenchcoat, he shook his head and grumbled, “May not matter.  Until we do something about that spell protecting the ruddy thing the best we can do is stare at it.”

Ali put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.  “We’ll figure a way around that, too,” she said.

“Right,” Pete said.  He glanced back at John.  “Call them back up.  Ali’s gonna need all they can dish out to charge her up for this.”

“Right-o,” John answered.

Pete turned his focus back on Frost and sent a telepathic message to her.  “That spell you mentioned is still there all right.  If you’ve got any ideas for dealing with it, now’s the time to make one go pear-shaped.”