Steady as an earthquake

(The following is my attempts at a twenty six word prompt with Locke, using each letter of the alphabet once. I want to get back into the swing of things with him.)

Attack

Sweat was positively pouring down Locke's face, making his hair stringy. Combined with his dead eye he was looking more than a little like a mad man. This was when he felt the most confident in himself, when his mind was not just his own. The more that Locke used his powers, the more he began to feel like he was made out of the earth and stones that he manipulated. He was Locke the rock man, steady, unchanging, and silent. People would look at him and think that he was simply a dependable sort, and if you saw him with little kids, you would swear that Locke was the gentlest young man on the planet. Similarly you wouldn't give a second glance to a few pebbles on the ground. But Locke with those few pebbles was dangerous.

It was a program that he had done multiple times, the very program he had to pass to gain his title as a X-Men. A vast and barren desert surrounded the Californian with sun bleached rocky formations the only thing to break up the landscape. Back when he first had to run this program all Locke had to do was find water. Giant scorpian creatures underneath the sand's surface had made the challenge even harder. Today though Locke wasn't simply trying to outrun these things. He was not being evasive, nor was he on the defense. It was all about the offence today.

"Come out come out wherever you are," Locke said with a smile that would make a crocodile nervous. He knew that heavy steps would draw the scorpions out. Running from them had just drawn them out faster before. Locke spread the fingers out for both his hands, feeling the trembling vibrations of the sand stretched before him like the bumps that formed the Braille alphabet. Hands twitched upwards and the sand echoed his movement. Giant sand hands formed and slammed the surface of the desert, once, twice, and then there was his quarry. "I'm not running from you today."

Locke's powers were growing in strength, and his control was so much better than when he was a runaway teen. The hands that had played the desert like a drum now collided together to form a wall of fingers and pressed forwards. He was purposefully driving the scorpian towards the rocks, knowing that it couldn't bury itself in the more solid substance. Hopefully the action would draw more scorpians to the surface. Locke wanted to test his limits, to see just how good he was.