The rain was falling heavily on the pavement outside the large building. It was a fairly bland building; it looked like a block of concrete, dark gray in the rain. A few trees hung their branches low to the ground outside it, doing nothing to improve the general look of the place. A few windows broke the stretch of concrete wall, a halo of yellow light surrounding them. Behind the glass vague shadows moved, some seeming to pass by them regularly. They were in fact regular as clockwork, as the person watching them noted down into a cell phone. Every fifth minute, it seemed. Time would be short.
Surveillance cameras dotted the walls, considerably more frequently than the windows. They spun occasionally, seemingly at random. They would be hard to predict. One of the cameras stopped spinning, as a strange substance hit it. After a few seconds, a small red dot on its side lit up, and an alarm began to howl. It was fairly quiet, the sound only barely escaping the walls, but the spotlights suddenly flooding the road and grounds were more easily noticed. It did not matter. The person who had set it off had long since disappeared into the darkness further down the road.
Inside the building emotions were mixed. Some people were frightened, some angry, some hopeful and yet others too heavily medicated to notice the noise. People were called, more medications were handed out, and neurotransmitters were blocked. For most of the inhabitants of the building, it was a night like any other.
.
On a remote island plans were being laid.
"Why," a calm voice inquired, "would you set off their alarms? Is this part of some plan of yours to which we are not privy?"
The calmness of his voice was the worst part, Mortimer thought. How even when he was fuming with rage he sounded as controlled and serene as if he were at a tea party, asking professor Xavier whether he preferred Earl Grey or Darjeeling. It was uncanny.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time?" he said hopefully. Eric raised a questioning eyebrow.
"It did! Fit the atmosphere of the prologue. Anyway, s'not like I left a bleedin' business card. They jus' know someone's comin', is all. Can't blue over there sneak in as a safety inspector or somefin'?"
"I do not believe blue can do that, as she is the one intercepting the meditransport, or has the entire plan escaped your tiny amphibian mind?"
He had a way of making good points like that. But it had seemed like a fun thing to do at the time. Curses. He knew he should have worked sober. He just looked up at the old man from his crouching position on the chair. Eric looked at him, a feeling of disappointment and a strange mix of wrath and benevolence radiating from his eyes. In the end, though, he just waved him of. Mortimer happily hopped out the door. He was glad he was useful enough for Eric to not bother punishing him. Must be something to do with being the only one knowing how to fix the currently broken helicopter. He grinned, and made his way to the hangar.
.
"Ready for the tests of the day, then?"
The same voice as always. The same ridiculously reflective glasses glancing briefly at her over a clipboard. A morning like any other.
"You say that like there's an alternative, mister," she said. It was her usual response to his usual question. There was not that much to talk about. Every relevant topic had long since gotten old.
"I don't see what you get out of these tests anymore, anyway. I mean, the same questions, the same fMRI tests, the same everything…"
She sat down, anyway, holding her arm out obediently and wincing a little at the prick of the needle. She was still not quite comfortable with the needles. She had assumed they would hurt less after a while, but no such luck. She had asked the man about it at one time. She couldn't remember his answer, it had been science-y and complicated, and she had been drugged up, as usual. It was probably stupid. Shaking her head, she began concentrating on the task at hand, and her hand disappeared, along with the rest of her. So, for that matter, did the linoleum. They should have given her socks.
.
Toad sat slumped in the cockpit, thumbing through some old magazine he found lying on the floor. It was boring. He was bored. What kind of job was it, anyway? "Guard the plane"? He was sure this was some stupid revenge from Magneto for having alerted the facility to their impending presence last week. He had felt like kicking some ass. Had been a long time since any decent job with guards he could take out. He liked taking out guards. They made a nice crunching sound. He sighed audibly, and checked his watch again. Still about two hours until anyone would be showing up. Gods, this was dull. He considered briefly leaving the plane and finding something more fun to do, but he had a feeling Ol' Erik had some means or other of keeping track of whether he wandered off. He had a feeling he ought to stay.
A weak buzzing sound distracted him, and he spent a few minutes chasing a particularly evasive fly around the plane. It crunched satisfyingly, at last. He looked around, in a vague hope that something interesting would turn up. Nothing did. He didn't like this plane. Or planes, really. He preferred the helicopter, but no, for this mission they needed the plane, Magneto said. He had questioned the old man about where they possibly could discreetly hide a plane, and Magneto in turn had asked him whether he thought he could shove 15 people in the helicopter. Toad had suggested stacking them on top of each other. The master of magnetism had not been convinced.
The mission was to break into some low budget government facility where they allegedly kept a dozen or so mutants locked up. Apparently they tested them, or extracted their DNA or something. He hadn't been paying too much attention. It was part of Magneto's new plan. They needed more mutants, individuals of more diverse abilities and aptitudes, as Magneto put it. Toad disliked the idea. The three other people in the Brotherhood had been difficult enough to get along with, and that was when they were four people sharing a decent size island. What they would do if they suddenly became nearly twenty he did not know, but he predicted it would not be nice. He had argued this. Had pointed out that these people would be broken by drugs and not fit to fight the right fight. Apparently his opinion was not relevant. It never was, Mystique was the only one who ever did have any influence on him. Though he would definitely not go to the lengths she did to get that influence. It was disgusting, really, Magneto was what, two hundred years old? Disgusting.
Bored with staring at nothing he hopped back to the cockpit and curled up in a chair, deciding that he could probably guard the plane just as well in his sleep.
Author's Note: God, it's been years since last I wrote fanfiction. Forgive me if I'm a bit out of it, and if I fail at excuses to put people on the island. Been a long time since I wrote anything story-like, too. Hope I'm not too rusty. I guess I'll get more into it as I go along. Not quite certain when it comes to writing Toad's accent. I'm probably overdoing it. It will adjust. And the temporary title is temporary.