A bit more thrashing, and Midnighter emerges, red and boiled, burns over a fair amount of his skin. But the creature he drags out of the water is dead, and that's what matters.

"You could've warned me," he says, wiping some of the blood and dead skin off his shoulder. "That might've killed a normal person." (No, because a normal person would have been smart enough to get the fuck out when the water started boiling.)

He throws the rainbow fish in John's direction. "You're on cooking duty, Pyro."