Twin Fire Signs ✓

Chapter 4

I came to in a medical facility, I'm assuming back on earth. Blinking to adjust my eyes to the harsh fluorescents, I attempt to sit up when I feel something heavy on my lap. Looking down I see Johnny has pulled a chair up to the side of my bed and is fast asleep, head in my lap.

I look up as the door opens and Reed walks in. He takes in Johnny's current state, giving him a look I didn't recognize, before turning to me and reading my chart. "How're you feeling?" He asks.

"Like I got hit by a bus." He nodded, flipping through the chart to double check that the staff was taking care of me.

"You know he hasn't left your side since he woke up?" I blinked at him, shocked.

"That surprised me."

"Why? I thought you liked him."

"Your ability to read my feelings is really impressive, since you can't seem to be able to read Sue's... Or your own." He chooses to ignore this.

"You seem to be healing alright. Your temperature is elevated, same as Johnny's." He says, losing himself in thought. He walks out after this and the sound of the shutting door wakes up. He turns to face me real quick, letting out a sigh of relief when he sees I'm awake.

"Hey! How're you feeling?" He asks.

"I've been better."

"I was so worried about you."

"Why?"

"Jackie, you've been out for three days. I'm allowed to be worried about you."

"Johnny, about what happened before the cloud hit..."

He interrupts me, "We can talk about it later. I left something for you in the bathroom. Get changed and meet me at my room down the hall." He says before leaving. I shook my head as my door shut again. How did I allow myself to get sucked back into his vortex so easily?

I looked in the bathroom attached to my room and saw a snow suit, coat and snowboard. "Oh it is on Storm!" I thought excitedly as I rushed to get changed. I rush down the hall to Johnny's room and walk right in to find him flirting with the nurse. "Are you kidding me?" I shouldn't be surprised but I am and I turn to leave.

Johnny stops me, grabs his board and pulls me out to where a helicopter is waiting to take us up the mountain. "Will you ever not flirt with every girl you come across?" I yell over the roar of the chopper.

"I'm sorry." He said, looking down as if ashamed. I didn't have a comeback. In all the years I'd known Johnny Storm that was the first apology that sounded sincere.

We were at the top of the mountain when he turned to me and yelled, "I'm gonna have them lower it a bit, we might be too high for you."

"We might be too high for you. I'll be fine. Keep up old man! Loser has to strip and then run through the facility." I yell back before launching myself off the side of the helicopter before I could hear him say to the pilots, "That's my future wife," before launching himself off and following me.

"Catch up loser!" I yell over to him. "You gotta do better than that."

"Ok, no more kid stuff. Check this out." He does some pretty impressive tricks. When we met back up, though, he had smoke rolling off of him.

"Johnny you're on fire!"

"Why thank you. You're still pretty good too."

"No Johnny, you're actually on fire." He looked down and saw that parts of his coat were actually consumed by flames.

"Oh shit!" He yells before taking off again. I watch him go over the edge before it looks like he's completely covered in fire, flying through the air.

"Johnny!" I yell after him before I feel myself heat up and I take off after him, briefly catching a glimpse of my skin, completely covered in blue flames, instantly melting the show in the surrounding area. I go over the side of the mountain after Johnny and crash into a crater next to him, both of us partially submerged in melted snow that had formed a sort of hot tub.

I looked down and saw I was completely naked, Johnny too. "If you wanted to get me naked, all you had to do was ask." Johnny says cheekily.

"This isn't funny Johnny. How're we going to get back to the facility?" He helps me climb out of the crater and I will sneak back into the facility, trying our best to stay hidden until we found a closet filled with scrubs. We take some and quickly get changed before running off to find Reed and Sue, who were in the cafeteria.

They give us a look when we walk up to them. Sue raises her eyebrow at our matching attire. Reed looks like he's going to put a hole through Johnny's head.

"Hey. You are never gonna believe what just happened to us." Johnny says. We see them looking at our outfits.

"Oh. Well, I can explain this." He smirks.

"It isn't what it looks like." I say before we rush out of the cafeteria, going to find Ben. We rush through the facility, me behind Reed and Sue dragging Johnny along.

"It has to be the cloud. It's fundamentally altered our DNA." Sue says, leaving Johnny behind to walk beside Reed. I hang back, walking with Johnny. He starts snapping his fingers, making a flame appear and then disappear with each snap. I was maneuvering hand around and it suddenly became engulfed in blue flames.

"Shit!" I said, jumping a little. Johnny looked at me with wide eyes.

"Let's not jump to conclusions. We need a massive amount of evidence before making that leap." Reed said to Sue, completely oblivious to the pyrotechnics show that was going on behind him.

They came to a brief halt in one of the hallways. Johnny and I approached them slowly, playing with our fires before extinguishing them. Sue pointed at us, more specifically what we were doing, before giving Reed a look that said there's your evidence. "Now picture that but everywhere." We say in unison.

"It was everywhere," Johnny added.

"The cloud has fundamentally altered our DNA."

"Cool!" Johnny said.

"Wicked!" I said.

"I'm pretty sure I was flying."

"Me too!" We finally made it back to the part of the facility where our rooms were and Reed was trying to get Ben to open the door. Johnny and I were still messing around with our powers.

"Cut it out guys!" Sue yelled at us.

"Still getting the hang of it." Johnny said. I put out my flames and left the two siblings to go help mine get Ben's door open. None of us knew the passcode though and Ben was either refusing to open the door, or he physically couldn't. Reed steps back and stretches his arm under the door, unlocking it and pulling his arm back out to the hallway.

"Gross." Johnny and I say together, faces scrunched up in disgust. There's a crash and we enter Ben's room but he's no longer there, just a gaping hole in the wall to tell us where he went.

"Ben?" Reed calls out.

"Look! Look, look, look, look!" Johnny is pointing outside. "What is that thing?" I help Reed look around for something to tell us where Ben might've gone. Victor comes in but Sue handles him and he leaves.

"Anybody got an idea where the big guy's going?" Johnny asks. I step on a picture of Ben and Debbie that usually was kept in his journal.

"He's going home."