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“Are pretending we trust each other completely? I can do that if you want.” he said back to Sabine, Sam had reason to mistrust anyone who abducted mutants or started that way. Trust was earned, though this was a good start to building more of it.

“It doesn’t, makes it easier to work our magic. Remember the volcano?” Sam asked ducking a blast of heat that zoomed past him and exploded in green when it hit a frozen mystic. “Sides, gives us the home field advantage.” unless the army of mystics could control water and ice as well.

Shin arrived next and Sam got hit with a touch of nostalgia, these were people who he’d lay his life down for without any questions asked. His family, and this was their home. “Bout time!” he said with a chuckle throwing another mystic into a reflection and holding them there for Maya.

Jorge responded to the call to the rescue after the sprinklers kicked on. With another chuckle he looked to the nearest group of mystics, all of which were wielding some glowing weapons. They were smiling, good. They thought they had an advantage. After Jorge left, however, Sam felt a little more relaxed about using his abilities.

The water droplets on the mystics turned to ice and quickly grew upwards until each of the mystics in the group closest to him froze in place. Their expressions turned sour and Sam kept moving forward to the entrance. He needed to seal it off to give the rest of the defense a chance to regroup.

“I’ll make a bottle neck!” he shouted and started blasting at the front of the mansion walls which quickly erupted in ice. “Cover me!” he shouted to his teammates that were still around.

”How?” Sam asked grunting and moving away from Rex at his suggestion. Ice dug into the floor now trying to disrupt the circle. He didn’t understand magic. Nor had a belief in it until recently. It was not in his wheelhouse. Give him a mutation and he could figure out a few ways to defeat it. Magic? Only thing he could think of was kill the caster and it was still frowned upon for X-men to kill.

Someone else entered the room. He heard Latin and suddenly his arms were bound. Sam looked down to see the same chains that held Rex moments before entangling him. He pulled and tried to loosen them failing in freeing himself. ”Come on!” he shouted as from the center of the room where the ice was covering the ritual circle a blade of ice erupted and fell cutting one of the chains it was his foot.

With his foot now free he formed some ice and kicked upwards hitting another chain. It took two more strikes but he freed himself. ”What now?” he asked blasting some fire that caught on a curtain from Rex’s spell.

The ice worked it’s way into the grain of the wood where the ritual was being cast. It warped and spread till the circle broke and caused the flooring to become uneven.

It would have been easier if he was alone. He didn’t verbalize that though, Rex brought him along it would have been rude to ask him to sit this one out. The whole place would have been frozen solid by now. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case and they were close to finishing from what Rex said. He was the magic expert. Sam was just along for the ride.

”Hold on.” his eye opened as he turned he couldn’t focus on Rex, or near him when he was using his thermal vision. Raising a hand he shot a beam of blue, one that remained for a few seconds. He was aiming for the floor where the seal was. Hoping it would help. He hated magic. It was too unpredictable.

Ice creeped upwards from the floor until it looked like a miniature iceberg. A clone started to crawl out reaching for the mystic who had just kicked Rex.

Sam’s lone eye spotted Rex chained. ”****” he cursed and ran into the room disengaging with the mystic who just missed him again with a baton that whistled with each whiff. A blade of ice formed and Sam took a swing at the spell restraining Rex.

There was heat, Rex was fighting back. Sam couldn’t focus for too long otherwise he felt he would go blind. It was like looking into the sun. Speaking of which, the room lit up behind him. His eye was still shut but he could see through his closed eyelid. He didn’t want to open them incase he was sent into another mind **** illusion. He always doubted he could fight those off. It was... too welcoming.

The clone froze in place as the four green chains wrapped around the clones limbs, Sam could have countered it but he wasn’t paying attention. He couldn’t see what was restraining the clone at the moment.

Movement in front of him caused him to sidestep again as the baton whiffed the air where his nose was seconds before. The mystic followed it up with another and another. Sam dodged them all well enough but he was noticing the man was trying to drive him into a corner where another mystic had moved to. Chanting behind him and now in front the baton he couldn’t see started to get hot and he had to sever his thermal sense. His eye snapped open and he saw it was on fire. Cute.

”Rex, how we looking buddy?” he wanted to know the timeline of the portal or whatever the spell they were working on. He didn’t know magic but he was phenomenal at working under pressure.

The air moved rapidly behind him in fact small debris and shards of broken ice started getting lifted and sucked up to a point between the mystic behind him. Sam smirked and willed the ice to jet outward long enough to stab the mystic disrupting the spell and causing said mystic to their knees trying to stifle the bleeding.

Sam turned blasted a beam of ice and froze the found and them in place before turning to the last one he was tangling with.

The sound of bone a nose breaking could be heard from the impact. A little harder than Sam wanted but they were planning on sacrificing someone to open a gate to hell. Or wherever they were planning on opening a gate to. Sam just knew it was bad. A broken nose was nothing compared to an army of demons being unleased in the city.

Sam didn’t get the answer he was expecting, in fact probably no one was expecting what happened next. The room grew dark just before a brilliant jet of fire erupted from where Rex was. Sam could tell because the person that was getting tangled up with the two that were tackled to the ground was getting warmer. Hot even. Too hot to feel.

Severing the connection of his thermal sense during the durations of the flames Sam slammed a wall to his back pushing up against the faded wallpaper.

The house grew orange with fire. At first Sam thought it was the portal opening, but then again this was not a roaring inferno of a burning building, this was coming from a person's breath. He had seen Rex spew flames before. At least those creatures were made of flames. This was no different other than the intensity of the heat. It was... not as hot as he had seen Rex breathe.

He was holding back.

Another jet of fire in a circle then darkness. In those brief moments of darkness and cold, when the light and heat faded Sam made his moves. With the wall to his back, he got a scene of everything. Those with their attention turned from Sam to the flames and those in the room still chanting. A clone of ice formed again this time charging right into the room to give Rex a hand. It was going after the triangle of people.

There would have been two after them, but the baton whistled through the air hitting the other that formed slightly after.

“You are fighting us freak. You don’t have time to be looking elsewhere.”

Sam chuckled, if they could have seen him properly, they would have known his good eye was shut. ”I’ll have to make this quick then.” the air around them got even colder as more ice climbed up the wall and up Sam.

The closer he got to the house the more and more flickering of thermal readings became clearer. Despite Rex’s abilities. Candlelight take shape meaning Sam was already coming up with a game plan. The way they stood made the center of the circle and the focus of the would be cultists clear but there was no one in the center. Not yet at least.

Eyeing the front door Sam wondered what the best point to enter would be. If they did a direct approach... his lone eye focused on Rex walking past him while his mind raced. The clones were about to circle the house and jump in through the first floor windows however that wasn’t what happened.

The door was kicked open and entered. Sam stood on the outside waiting for Rex to move in. He did, then the firefighter was thrown like it was nothing. ”Rex, think we found it!” when his friend smacked into the wall next to the door Sam had all the clearance he needed to press inwards, his clones followed in toe.

The robbed figure that tossed Rex was met with a clone who tackled it to the ground while Sam and the other figure of ice surged into the main room. ”Oh ****” he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. It didn’t matter though, it didn’t' need to make sense. His lone eye shifted to every ones feet while he relied on the thermal readings to give him most of his information. He wasn’t going to be mind wammied again.

“Keep chanting!” one of the cultists shouted as he charged Sam. With a sidestep and a shove his attacker was pressed into clone number two who wrapped around the hooded figure and fell backward fusing the robed one to the wall with a sheet of ice.

The chants were going, ”Ooga oooga chaka!” he repeated his own chant trying to distract everyone while he lunged at the next figure.

>>>”More data is required. I wish to only move when it counts.”

The icemancer chuckled. She was experienced in battle. That was his first thought as well. Years of training drilled into him at such a young age. It often felt like he was going against his very own nature jumping into fights and rescue operations now.

”Is it?” Sam asked curiously. ”We already know enough to find a better vantage point. We can’t do much here on the outside. The police and hostage takers will be at a stand off until one side concedes enough to get the other to move.” Sam watched as the police ran from behind one vehicle to another all keeping their eyes on the entrance to the building.

”We know that there is at least one hostage. They could have ran when they were outside, the rope would have been easy enough to handle but they way they looked... leads me to believe that there is someone they can’t run away from. Meaning multiple hostages.” he said simply, ”We also know standard practice is to block off all entrances and exits but we don’t really need those do we.” he said looking to the side of the building.

There was an window cleaning platform suspended ten floors up. It was the point of entrance he and Mirror took to enter the building last time. There was also a fire escape.

”This is different than the missions we are used to, the longer we take the more likely someone is injured.”