"Ach!" Mike doubles over, spreading his thin arms wide, "Oh...oh God."
"Dude?" asks Lucas meekly, "Oh, no, dude, not you too..."
"It's...it's happening to me," Mike squeezes his eyes shut, "I can feel like. Like...like a charge."
"What is this, Mike?" demands Frankie, "What can we do? What's HAPPENING?"
"It's...it's an old r-rumor," his brow is beaded with sweat, his voice lowered to a hushed whisper, "Experiments...Cold War...r-radiatAH!"
Twin coils of electricity shoot from his fingertips to singe the ground to either side of him. Ben lets out a yelp, backing up against a nearby tree.
"Man, what is happening to you?" asks Lucas.
"It affects everyone differently," says Mike, "I feel...oh God. I don't know what they were experiencing, but this..."
A faint and pervasive glow begins to become apparent from under Mike's skin, as if he's being lit from within.
"Holy shit," swears Frankie, "Mike? Mike, are you still there, man?"
"Still there?" he grins, a more assured expression than they've ever seen alighting on his face, "I've never felt more RIGHT."
Lucas and Frankie look at each other, uncertain.
"It's...burning through me. Purifying me," Mike laughs raucously, the light within him brightening to a sheen, "I feel so warm. So hot!"
His clothes begin peeling off him, shorn off by his increasing body temperature. Frankie lets out a short cry, "Look! His feet!"
Mike's boots, already half-melted, lie discarded on the ground. He is levitating off the ground, becoming lighter than air as the plasma within him takes over his body.
"It's incredible!" Mike cries out, "My head...it's CLEAR! This energy inside me...it's growing. G-guys...listen to me!"
The other three look up at him, struck silent.
"Whatever happens...it's alright. They're ADAPTATIONS. We'll...we'll be okay. As long as...AH!" the light is intensifying, "As long as we don't...don't...forget who..."
"It's too bright," Ben warns.
"What?" demands Lucas.
"It's too bright! Look away!"
"It's Mike!" says Lucas, "I can't just!"
"LOOK AWAY!"
The usually timid and doughy Ben jumps Lucas and Frankie, pushing them both to the ground as Mike's light reaches a blinding point. The entire grove shakes, leaves being burnt off the trees for a ten foot radius in every direction.
Lucas opens his eyes an uncertain amount of time later to feel fresh rain pattering on his skin. Fresh, wet mud is caking his jersey, his shorts, and the bare thighs beneath.
"Frank?" he asks weakly, "Ben?"
"Right here, bro," Frankie is leaning against a tree, "The hero's a little way back there," he nods to where Ben is sitting on a rock, rubbing his eyes, "No sign of Mike."
"What do you mean NO SIGN of him?"
Frankie shakes his head, "Don't like at me, man. I wanted to go to Vegas."
"What he said..." Lucas wraps his arms around himself, "Do you really think we're all going to change? Turn into..."
"Freaks?" Frankie says darkly, "I'm gonna fucking make sure I don't."
"The guys aren't freaks," says Ben tartly, "It could've happened to all of us."
"It probably still will," says Lucas, "Where are Joey and Nick?"
"What, didn't they come all over us and pass out?"
But Frankie finds to his disquiet that both brothers are gone. A sizable imprint remains in the mud where Nick had been lying.
"Do you think..." Lucas begins, "Mike pushed them away? Like, with that light?"
"I don't know," says Frankie, "All I know is I'm not sticking around to get my ass turned inside out by nuclear fallout or whatever the hell. Now, are you guys with me or not?"