Colonel MacKenzie arrived half an hour later with an armload of electronic equipment, two department store bags, and a folded-up newspaper. The electronics she summarily dumped on the floor and left to the Marine guards to assemble. The bags and paper remained in her hands.

"Open the cells," she ordered one of the guards - Fullham, as it turned out.

He immediately said, "Aye-aye, ma'am," and stepped up to Evan's cell, running the keycard through the lock mechanism.

Evan practically flew out of his cell. "Yes! Freedom at last!"

"Not quite," Rabb warned. "You're still in the government's custody. All you've done is changed keepers."

Evan dismissed that with a snort and a wave of his hands. "Whatever, man - I mean, sir. I was about to go nuts in there."

MacKenzie had been digging around in one of the bags, and now surfaced with a neatly-folded stack of clothes and a pair of sneakers which she handed off to Evan. "Here. Go change."

Evan took the clothes, grinning. "Dude, this just gets better. Nice sneaks."

"Thanks," MacKenzie said, acknowledging the compliment in her taste. "Dr. McCoy helped with this part, though."

"You did? When?" Rogue demanded of him. She sounded more curious than upset.

"Two days ago," Beast said. "That was the meeting that ran until midnight. All of you were asleep."

Fullham unlocked Fred's cell next. Fred emerged with a visible sense of relief, although it was not quite so visible as Evan's display. MacKenzie gave him a new set of clothes as well, and Beast was impressed with her resourcefulness. After all, how many stores carried the size clothes needed by the Blob?

As Fullham was unlocking Rogue's door, Rabb grabbed the newspaper and brought it over to Beast. Holtz, also on duty, immediately moved to open the door. "Thought you might find this one interesting, Doc."

Beast took the paper and Holtz shut the door again. It was that morning's edition of the 'Daily Bugle,' a newspaper he seldom read because of its tendency toward sensationalism. But the banner headline certainly made this edition hard to dismiss.

"MUTANTS: AMERICA'S NEW SCAPEGOATS?"

The byline loudly proclaimed that this was an editorial written by the editor-in-chief himself, one J. Jonah Jameson. Recalling the man's vituperative attacks on anything remotely resembling the paranormal, Beast read on cautiously.

As it turned out, he was pleasantly shocked.

"In the 1700s, we saw innocent men and woman hung for their suspected ties to the Devil. In the 1940s, we saw thousands of Americans sent to concentration camps for their suspected ties to the Japanese Empire. In the 1950s, we saw hardworking and decent people railroaded for their suspected ties to communism. In the last decade, we've seen immigrants and born Americans
persecuted for their suspected ties to terrorists. Persecution and senseless witch hunts are nothing new to this country. That fact saddens me at the same time it fills me with a sense of outrage. And now, now, we're bearing witness to the start of a brand-new search for a scapegoat. This one has nothing to do with politics, or religion, or gender, or ethnicity. This one is much more diabolical.

"We're not hunting our own kind anymore, if you listen to the rhetoric spouted by men like Dr. Bolivar Trask. We're hunting abominations. Monsters. Evil demons walking among us, just waiting for their chance to leap up and destroy us. They look like us. They pretend to be us. They go to school with our children - they teach our children. We have to get them before they get us.

"Ladies and gentlemen, that's garbage.

"Right now, Dr. Henry McCoy is about to go to trial. This is a man - a man, not a monster - who hasn't done a single thing to warrant prosecution. All he's guilty of is being born with the wrong genes, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is a man who went to college on a football scholarship and stayed until he got his doctorate in biochemistry. This is a man who walked away from a high-paying job as a researcher to teach snot-nosed high school kids what an atom looks like. This is a man who is overwhelmingly less guilty than the man accusing him at every turn.

"What I want to know, what any thinking creature should want to know, is why Dr. Bolivar Trask is getting off without so much as a slap on the wrist. It was his giant robot that rampaged through the city streets; it was Dr. McCoy who was running for his life. Who's the real aggressor? Who's posing the real danger to mankind?

"What makes a man a beast - his genes or his actions?

"Ask yourself those questions carefully. Ask the government's prosecutors tomorrow when Dr. McCoy's trial starts. Ask Dr. Trask the next time he starts an anti-mutant tirade.

"Are you ready for a new witch hunt, America? Are you ready to hang more innocents?"

Beast finished reading and folded the paper again; Rabb motioned for him to keep it. "It's an interesting point of view. Refreshing, too."

"We're thinking of reading it verbatim for our opening statement," Rabb said, clearly joking. All the same, it wasn't such a bad idea.

The two boys had finished changing clothes and were standing silently - if fidgeting - behind the lawyers. They looked ready to walk the halls and rooms of Bayville High again. Beast conceded that MacKenzie really had done well.

"While we're waiting for Rogue," Rabb said, "I want to talk about the trial. Mac and I will both be there for the first day, and after that we'll start be taking turns."

"One of us is there with you, the other one is watching the kids," MacKenzie said, giving Rabb a faint smile. "We'll alternate days. It'll be just like parenthood."

An identical smile flickered over his face before vanishing back into a professionally neutral mask. "That way we can make sure that everyone is okay."

"But won't that interfere with... everything?" Beast asked, making a vague, encompassing gesture with the hand not holding the paper. "If you're going with a tag-team defense?"

"No." MacKenzie turned and nodded in the direction of the electronic equipment. "Not thanks to the miracle of closed-circuit TV. We have the apartment wired too, so whoever's staying can watch it."

"It's not the ideal," Rabb said, looking slightly apologetic, "but it was the best thing we could work out."

Beast was filled with more than a little unease about the idea. "If you think it'll work..."

"It'll work," MacKenzie said confidently.

Rogue returned then, wearing an outfit that would've looked more at home on Jean, and as she joined the crowd by the cells, she pulled at her new shirt's long sleeves in vague distaste. "Are we goin' or what?"

"We're going." Rabb stepped away from Beast's cell with a nod and polite, "Doctor."

MacKenzie gestured at the children in a clear "move it or lose it" motion that made Beast think of drill sergeants. Well, they'd survived Wolverine; a Marine shouldn't be too difficult.

The students all filed out, looking over their shoulders and saying goodbye. The lawyers were right beside them the whole time.

"Goodbye," Beast called back. The door shut behind them and he slumped back, sighing heavily. What had he done, turning them over to unknown people like that? He might as well have given them to Magneto. At the same time, he knew that this was truly the best possible action he could've taken. On the outside, the children were infinitely better off.

There was a click, and he looked up to see that Holtz had opened the door to his cell again. The lieutenant gestured. "Well? You want to say goodbye to them or not?"

Beast blinked, then quickly made his way out of the cell. Holtz began walking him to the warehouse doors. "Thank you, Lieutenant."

Holtz snorted. "Thank me? Thank the lawyers for getting Blob out of here. He's gone through six months' supplies in two weeks. Base commander was ready to ship you all out to Alaska."

Beast chuckled. "Would they have more food in Alaska?"

"No. But they could turn him loose and let him fend for himself. Free-range - you know." Holtz, it seemed, was in an especially talkative mood tonight.

They cleared the door with no problem and Beast emerged into the fresh air for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. He had to squint against the bright light of the full outdoors, but saw plainly a nondescript black van with laquer-black windows sitting just a few yards away. Fred was climbing in with difficulty; the other two students were standing around and looking intimidated by the dozens of armed, camo-wearing Marines also standing around.

"Rogue," Beast called out, deciding to forgo another round of goodbyes in favor of a last-second mission briefing.

She turned around, surprise written all over her pale face, and jogged back to him, throwing wary looks at the Marine soldiers on the way. "Yeah?"

Beast looked up at Holtz. "Could you excuse us for a moment? I swear on a stack of Marine Corps Hymns we won't try to escape."

Holtz narrowed his eyes. "You get twenty seconds."

"More than enough, thank you," Beast said, and motioned for Rogue to come closer as Holtz retreated a discreet distance away. "Rogue, while you're with the lawyers, I want you to do something for me."

"What?"

"Be my eyes and ears. Find out what you can about them." The assignment would make her feel better, suspicious as she was; there was something to the old adage of "know your enemy."

Rogue looked at the ground, then at him. "I don't want to do this, Mr. McCoy."

The use of his "teacher name" gave him a clear idea of how she was feeling, and it wasn't positive. She wasn't talking about the assignment, either, but about the entire situation of leaving with two humans they'd never met before.

As if she hadn't made that clear already.

He gave her a reassuring smile and put his hand on her arm as best he could, given his restraints. "I know. Nor do I want to stand trial. But the alternative..." He let that hang in the air for a moment, then said, "Do you believe that humans and mutants can live together in harmony?"

She hesitated, then said, "Yeah."

"Then this is your golden opportunity to prove it. You're the leader now. It's your responsibility to keep the boys in line and promote positive human-mutant relationships."

"But... what if it's a trap?"

He bit back a sigh, forced a grin, and said, "In that case, you get my full permission to have Blob sit on their heads."

That earned him the ghost of a smile. "Okay."

"Good." He patted her armand nodded in the direction of the van. "Go on. Don't keep the lawyers waiting; they might decide to sue."

She stood up straighter, face taking on a determined expression; Beast could practically see her accepting all of the responsibilities that had just been laid on her shoulders. Without a word, she turned around and walked - no, strode - to the van, climbing inside with confidence.

He waved to everyone as they drove off, then allowed himself to be escorted back inside.

All in all, he rather felt sorry for the two lawyers.

Note: Jameson's (surprisingly) enlightened stance towards mutants is best displayed in UXM #346 - "The Story of the Year!" - when Bastion offers him a disc filled with information about mutants... info that's been pilfered from the X-Mansion itself. Faced with the chance to break the story of the century, JJ turns Bastion down flat and burns the disc to ash. He thinks Bastion is a liar, he thinks mutants are being scapegoated, and he doesn't want to undermine the integrity of his paper by printing anti-mutant lies. Right on, dude. Buy the issue for that, and for the chance to see Marrow and Spidey duke it out with each other. Thwip!

Astute Harm/Mac shippers will of course note that there's the infamous baby deal. Just like parenthood, indeed. :)