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Chapter 2: Trial by Fire
(In Which the Guys Play Hero and Joey Reveals His Destructive Nature)

"Hey, watch where you're sticking that thing!"

Justin snickered to himself as Chris's high-pitched shriek reached his newly-sensitive ears. He'd been carefully and quietly experimenting with his sight and hearing, and had listened in on each of his friends in turn. Lance was cool, calm, and collected, holding a leisurely conversation with his nurses. JC was nervous, but trying to hide it by babbling uncontrollably about the deeper meaning of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." Joey was having problems—they wanted to draw some blood, but the needle kept breaking every time it hit his skin. There were currently eleven nurses and two doctors crowded into Joey's room, all trying to figure out why the heck their needles kept shattering. And Chris....

"Ouch! Dammit, woman, what are you, a vampire?!"

Justin snickered again. Well, genius obviously hadn't changed Chris one bit.

The nurse taking his blood pressure was looking at him strangely, so Justin pasted on a benign smile. "Sorry," he told her. "This whole thing is just... weird, you know?"

"Hmm." She just gave the blood pressure cuff another squeeze, causing him to wince in discomfort. The other nurse patted him condescendingly on the head.

He let his hearing wander again. Chris was still whining and complaining, but both he and his nurses were laughing, so no real problems there. JC was still babbling. Lance was still being Lance, and Joey had acquired three more doctors.

"...Kill the motherfuckers."

Justin jumped, a little startled, and frowned. That wasn't a voice he knew, and it certainly didn't sound good.

"...blow their motherfucking heads off." It only took him a second to realize that the click he heard next was the chambering of a gun.

"Shit!" Justin leapt away from the startled nurses and bolted down the hallway to Chris's room, the blood pressure cuff still dangling from his arm. "Chris, something's goin' down," he blurted, interrupting one of the nurses in mid-sentence. "I heard a gun!"

Chris was immediately serious. "You get Lance, I'll get Joey and JC. Where are we headed?"

Justin cast out his hearing once more, easily locating the voice still muttering curses and dire threats. "Waiting room. We've got to hurry, he's gonna snap any minute now!"

Chris nodded curtly and was gone. Justin blinked in confusion, rocked back by the gust of wind kicked up by Chris's departure, then remembered the super-speed. "Oh, yeah." He hurried away from the gawking nurses to Lance's room.

He, JC, and Lance ended up at the double doors leading out to the waiting room only a few seconds before Chris and Joey. "Thanks again, man," Joey was saying, rubbing at his sore but unmarked arm. "I think they were about to try a chainsaw, or something."

"So what's going on," Lance asked, all business. Doctors and nurses began to gather in the hallway behind them, obviously unsure of whether or not to interfere.

"There's a guy in there with a gun," Justin explained quickly. "He's pissed 'cause his wife died here and he thinks it's the hospital's fault. He's sayin' how he's gonna kill everybody here or die trying. He's close to snappin', we gotta move, like now."

"Okay, here's the plan," Chris whispered, his manner more serious than they'd ever seen before. "Joey, you and I will go out there and scout the place out. He starts shooting, we need you to draw his fire, try to let the bullets hit you instead of any innocent bystanders. You are bullet-proof, right?"

Joey shrugged. "Probably. I'm scalpel-proof, anyway."

"Right." Chris continued. "Anyway, I can draw his fire, too, I think I'm fast enough to dodge any bullets he sends my way, but I'm gonna try to help get everybody out of there, too. I need you for cover."

Joey drew himself up, eyes twinkling with pride. "No problem."

Chris smiled fondly at him as he continued. "Lance, once everybody's out of there, you can get the gun away from him telekinetically."

Lance nodded in agreement.

"Justin, once Lance has the gun, you can neutralize it with your lasers. Try not to eradicate the handgrip, because the cops will want it for fingerprints."

"Precision lasers, right."

"JC, can you turn into an inanimate object?"

JC frowned. "I dunno. Like what?"

"Handcuffs."

JC thought about that for a long moment, biting his lip. "Umm...." And then he was gone and there was a pair of handcuffs on the floor. The gathered medical personnel gasped and began to argue furiously amongst themselves, but they were basically ignored. Chris picked up the handcuffs and gave them to Joey. "Get these on the guy once the gun is taken care of. Is that a plan?"

"That's a plan," Lance asserted. The rest of them nodded in agreement, and the handcuffs hanging from one of the loops on Joey's Superman belt clicked open and shut twice in rapid succession.

"Okay," Chris grinned, looking somewhat dangerous. "Let's go."

Joey stepped into the waiting room.

~*~

It was all over in minutes. Joey's entrance set the gun man off, and he whipped the gun out of his long overcoat, ready to carry out his threat. Joey was in front of it before the trigger ever went down, and the bullets bounced harmlessly off his chest. The man kept trying to spray the room with bullets, not realizing he was doing no damage. Chris darted in and out of the room carrying screaming small children, then ushered out the older folks under the protection of Joey's impenetrable bulk. The room was cleared in no time, and Chris joined Joey in drawing the man's fire.

When the shooting stopped and the man hurriedly tried to reload, Lance stepped out and directed an intense stare at the gun, which wrenched itself out of the man's hands and floated into the air. Joey immediately lunged forward and cuffed him, while Justin took care of the gun and Lance set the melting metal down on the floor.

Chris checked his watch, breathing only slightly harder than usual. "Hmm, six minutes. Not bad."

Joey looked mournfully down at his shirt, riddled in bullet holes, as people began to inch back into the room, staring in confusion. "Man," he said softly, a hint of a whine in his voice. "I liked this shirt!"

The handcuffs on their prisoner's hands clicked open as police flooded the room, and turned back into JC as they hit the floor. The crowd gasped in amazement, unable to believe what they were seeing with their own eyes; even the gunman was frozen in shock. "Oops." JC glanced apologetically at his friends. "Sorry, guys, I just... couldn't hold it any longer."

"Umm...." Justin shuffled his feet nervously, trying to think of something to say.

"Right, so... we can explain this," Lance began.

"We can?" Chris asked, unconsciously stepping behind Joey.

"Sure! Um... well.... No."

"Right," Justin agreed.

Joey sighed. "I really, really liked this shirt."

~*~

"Okay," growled Captain Simon Taggart of the local police department, casting an unfriendly glare around the table in the interrogation room. "Let's try this again."

He had been called away from the mess at the nuclear plant by a frantic call about a hostage situation at the hospital, only to find a room full of confused people, a melted gun, and these five weirdoes claiming to be superheroes. He was baffled by it. The reports from the witnesses were ridiculous, but amazingly, they all matched. There had to be something off, here. They had to be pulling something. A publicity stunt, maybe. After all, whoever heard of a boyband wanting to tour a nuclear power plant in the first place?

"You." He pointed at the one who seemed the most sensible, a pale fellow with spiky blond hair. "What's your name again?"

The young man stifled a sigh and answered. "James Lance Bass, sir."

"Right. Now you know, if you admit to this now, it'll go a lot easier on you. How did you do it? Did you pay the guy? Set up the accident at the plant? Confessing will lighten your sentences."

"What?!" The curly-headed kid leapt out of his chair, sending it flying backward. "What sentences, we didn't do anything!"

"Sit. Down."

"No way, man, are you crazy? We saved everybody's life, and you wanna punish us?! What for?"

He stood up, too, and got right in the kid's face. "You engineered this whole thing as a publicity stunt, didn't you?"

"No!"

"Lying won't gain you any sympathy from the judge."

"Look, man why are you picking on us?" The muscular one with the goatee was standing now, too, glaring fiercely. "We didn't do anything wrong, we saved lives! And this was one of my favorite shirts!"

The captain eyed the destroyed article of clothing, feeling a hint of doubt in his theory. The shirt was shredded, full of bullet-holes, and if they had been using blanks, that wouldn't have happened. Anything that could have done that to a shirt would certainly have done it to the tender flesh beneath—but the kid was untouched. "I'll give you credit for that," he said, indicating the shirt. "Don't know how you did it...."

"I got fucking shot!"

The short one with the elfish features started to chuckle. Captain Taggart glared at him. "What the Hell are you laughing at, punk?"

The kid bit his lip, trying to stifle his laughter. "Nothing. Sorry."

The skinny kid, the one who really hadn't said much of anything yet, finally spoke up. "Look, Captain, if we can prove that what we say is true, will you leave us alone?"

He eyed the kid suspiciously. "Prove it, how?"

"Show you we can do everything we say we did. You can see it with your own eyes."

Captain Taggart looked the determined man in the eyes and knew immediately that his whole world was about to be turned upside-down. He sighed. "Fine."

~*~

"Hey, genius-boy, why didn't you think of this?"

Chris shrugged at Joey as they sat watching Lance move various objects around the room with his mind. "I was kinda having fun, watching that guy get all worked up."

Joey rolled his eyes. "You would. Man, I hope they don't shoot me again."

"Why, did it hurt?"

Joey thought about that. "Not really. Kinda uncomfortable, though, like a shower massager that's got the pressure set too high."

Chris grimaced. "Oh. Well, maybe they'll find another way to test you."

Joey shook his head glumly. "They're gonna shoot me, I just know it."

"Okay, okay, cut it out." Captain Taggart waved a defeated hand at Lance, and the pencil-cup Lance had been moving crashed to the floor as he lost his concentration.

"Oops." He cringed. "Sorry."

Captain Taggart hung his head. "Who's next?"

"Do we still have to do this?" Justin asked wearily.

"Yeah," JC agreed, "I mean, you've already seen that we were telling the truth about Lance, doesn't it kinda follow that the whole thing was true?"

Taggart glared again. "No."

JC hung his head. "Damn."

Chris grinned and jumped up. "I'll go! Whaddaya want me to do?"

Joey pointed. "Go over there."

Chris did. Much to his disappointment, Taggart said he didn't require any more proof from him.

Justin and JC took their turns quickly, Justin repeating what one officer was whispering to another all the way down the hallway and then melting a floppy disk with his lasers. For JC's trick, he simply turned himself into a tomcat. He actually liked being a cat so much that he stayed that way even after his test was declared over, purring contentedly on Chris's lap.

Then it was Joey's turn. He stared apprehensively at the Captain, who stared apprehensively right back. "So," he said, very unenthusiastically, "You wanna shoot me?"

Taggart raised an eyebrow. "As much as I'd like to, I can't. Just my luck this would be the one thing you yahoos are lying about and I'd end up in jail."

"I'll shoot him," Justin chirped. "JC, turn into a gun."

"Joey, you don't have to do this. Just think of something else," Chris frowned, resting a restraining hand on JC's head.

"It's okay." Joey shrugged. "Just do it, Jayce."

The cat sighed, closed its eyes, and became a small handgun—with silencer. Chris picked it up off his lap distastefully and handed it to Justin. "Have fun."

Justin's eyes lit up as he took hold of the weapon. "Word! Thanks for the silencer, JC. All of that shooting at the hospital was pretty loud."

Taggart eyed him nervously. "You know how to handle that thing, kid?"

"Sure! Point and shoot. No problem."

All of the cops stepped far away from Joey.

"Ready, man?" Justin grinned at his friend, the gun pointing at the floor.

Joey glared at him. "I find it extremely disturbing that you are so eager to shoot me, Curly."

"Aww, you know I love you, Supe!

"Right. So, c'mon, shoot me. I'm ready." He stood stock still, hands clasped behind his back. Justin planted his feet, aimed, and fired. The bullet bounced harmlessly off Joey's chest and hit the floor, its tip slightly flattened.

Taggart swallowed hard. "You're off the hook. Get the Hell out of my police station."

Chapter: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Epilogue

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