Freeze wasn't doing well in school. He was smart, definitely brains over brawn. He typically enjoyed mathematics, science and music, especially music. However, this year his grades started to drop. He started losing the motivation to work hard. Like any other teenager, he did not neccesarily live to do homework, but in past years he could do it, even if it was the minimum required, and get away with it, but this year was different. He found it increasingly harder to be motivated to work, with the piles that had been forced onto him, as well as the numerous other factors in his almost non-existant social life, he was getting more and more stressed. It did not feel like clinical deppresion, but sometimes he would just feel so stressed that he would go outside and release his power, glaciating anything caught in the energy he released. Often, would any creature attack him, he would find it an oppertunity to vent his anger without hurting anyone. Killing creatures was a hobby more than the nececity in previous years. Nonetheless, no matter hom many monsters came before him, he would still have the stress of school weighted on his shoulders.
Freeze was still deep in this thought pattern the next day on his way to school. Another day at the slaughter house, he thought, then knowing that if a creature decided to annoy him whilst at school it would indeed be a slaughterh house. Windows fogged as he passed shops. He wished, he just wished that something would happen that would let him miss school. He had not had a day off that year (except for the swimming carnival), which was understandable as it was only first term, but the holidays were rearing and he did not know if he could cope without at least one day off. He was not going to fake being sick, but if he were to get sick, he would by no means be upset for missing school.
He got to school unharmed, much to his own dissapointment, and went about his day as usual, until lunchtime. At lunchtime he was in the computer room when suddenly all the lights and computers went out. Curses were heard from the supervising teacher and a few of the students, whilst Freeze had a hunch that he knew exactly what caused it. He ran out the door and down the corridor to the technicians' office. He asked them where the powerboard was, they were reluctant, but upon realising the possible cause of the power outage told him it was behind the science rooms near the sport courts. He ran quickly, dodging through children and the occasional teacher. Fortunately, most of the students had not noticed the black out and were going about their games and conversations, but when he reached the rooms where the powerboard was he could see students cowering around the corner, whimpering and poithItnting at the powerboard. Freeze turned and looked to see something he had never seen before. It was a humanoid figure in a full hooded dark-red robe. The sun seemed to dim slightly, as if it had gone behind a raincloud, but there was no rain or wind, only darkness.
Freeze called to the figure ¨What are you doing?¨
The figure turned and shrieked. It's face was completely covered, but the shriek made it easier to tell that it was not human. Freeze drew a little cold energy and threw it at the figure in the form of many icicles, but the figure lifted up a gloved hand and muttered something, stopping the icicles in mid air and letting them fall to the ground. Freeze gasped, but stood his ground. He chanelled all the energy he could this time and sapped the heat from the space the hooded figure stood, but something happened, something interupted his actions. A bolt of electricity hit him in the chest and coursed through his body, knocking him over.
The hooded figure spoke for the first time, in a deathly monotonous voice. ¨That must have been a shock for you¨ he taunted.
Freeze got up and prepared to retaliate, but stopped for a moment. He realised that thing in the robe was draining the elctricity from the power box, so he summoned the small amount of power he had left and created a wall of ice between the figure and the box. It worked. A loud cry was heard from the dark gap in the hood. Freeze took this oppertunity to sap the heat from the figure, freezing him perfectly this time. He left the head outside the ice, and decided to interrogate the thing in the robe.
¨Who... What are you?¨
¨Your worst nightmare.¨ And with those words, he and the ice that had encased him dissapeared with a crakle of lightning, leaving shards of ice all over the ground. Lights came on in classrooms near him and the few people that had witnessed the event cheered. Freeze was not as cheerful, however. Something, or someone, was after him, or something close to him, and he needed to find out what before it got to him.
