ENTER THE CAJUN
(Disclaimer: characters belong to Marvel, Kids WB, etc.)
(A/N: this is the sequel to What About Todd, and picks up at the end of that story. It's kind of set in the middle of my other story Mindshadow; I didn't plan it that way, it just kind of happened.)
"Stop that kid! He's got my wallet!" Scott Summers shouted.
The small group chased the boy in the sunglasses and long brown coat down the sidewalk, towards the pier. He weaved in and out of the crowd, trying to evade them, but that coat of his—what was he doing wearing a heavy coat in June anyway?—was easy to spot among the light-colored clothes of the tourists.
"Why don't you just blast him?" Evan Daniels asked Scott.
"Too many people in the way!"
"I've got a fix on him," Brenda said. Her power to telepathically locate anyone sure came in handy sometimes. "He's heading for the arcade! We need to cut him off before then!"
"How?"
"Leave it to me," Logan growled. He moved through the crowd until he was only a few yards away from the boy.
The young thief looked back at that moment and saw him. He then tossed something over his shoulder, which exploded in midair.
"Get down!" Scott instructed the others. They flattened themselves onto the pavement. A second later, the object fluttered to the ground.
Brenda picked it up carefully.
"What is it?" asked Scott.
"The ace of clubs," she said, looking at it intently.
She probed into the boy's mind to find out how he'd done it, and got the shock of her life.
"He's one of us!"
"One of us? You mean a mutant?"
"Bingo," Rogue said. "We need to get him out of the open, and somewhere we can talk to him. There's too many people here . . . one of Magneto's little bully-boys might be lurking around."
"I thought they left already," Kitty said.
"They might have come back."
"I got this guy." Evan sprang into action, pursuing the kid like an ant after a picnic basket. His quarry had gained some ground, but not much, and Evan caught up with him and tackled him to the ground.
The kid was swearing in French a mile a minute by the time the others caught up. "What do you think you're doing?" he gasped.
"We don't want to hurt you—"
"You already have!"
"Listen to me! We are like you. You have . . . something special. Well, all of us do too." Jean saw an interested spark in his eyes and continued. "We can help you understand what's happened, but you have to trust us."
"Trust you?" He stood up, once Evan had released him, and brushed dirt off his coat. "Why should I?"
Brenda decided to use one of the pieces of information she had picked up out of his mind. "Because we're not like that guy you met in Delaware. We would never hurt you like that."
The boy looked at her, blinked a couple of times, then his mouth opened and closed. Finally he said, "How did you know about that?"
"My gift is being able to read your thoughts. I know you've met a lot of people on the road who wanted to use you, hurt you, or both. We're not like that. We really do want to help you. Please give us a chance."
After what seemed like an eternity, the boy finally answered. "Okay."
"How could we be lost?"
"Beats me. You had the map."
"Me? I thought you had it!"
"That's it! I'm stopping the car!" Lance hit the brakes and pulled off the road (if you could call it a road; it was more like a cow path with two grooves in it). "Get out and walk!"
"What, all the way back to--?"
"I'm not listening to you fight any more. Either shut up, or walk home."
The trilling of a cell phone interrupted them. "Okay, who's got the phone?" Lance asked.
"You do," said Pietro.
"Oh." He found it in his left-hand pocket and answered it. "Hello?"
"Where are you?" It was Mystique.
"Uh . . . somewhere in Vermont, I think."
"Well, you need to go back to New Hampshire. A new mutant just surfaced in the town you just left."
"What? But we've been driving for three hours—"
"This mutant," Mystique said, in her don't-argue voice, "is very important to certain people. If you don't get to him before Xavier's people do, don't bother coming home." She hung up noisily in his ear.
"Great," Lance sighed. "Get back in the car. We have to go all the way back to stupid New Hampshire and get some stupid new mutant."
"How we supposed to do that if we're lost?" Fred asked.
"All we have to do," Pietro said, "is go back the way we came till we hit I-93. It's back there somewhere."
"Can we go on the boat again?" Todd asked.
The others all looked at him. Ever since they'd left New Hampshire, he'd been going on and on about the boat ride on the lake. (Leaving out, of course, the fact that he'd been strapped to the mast to keep him from falling overboard.)
"Yeah, sure, we'll go on the boat," Lance said. To the others he whispered, "We can ditch him somewhere, right?"