Part 6

(Yay! Next-to-the-last part! Will be finished within the next week, I promise!)

"Know any good prayers?" Lance asked Nightcrawler.
" Nein. Do you?"

"Everyone split up and surround them," Wolverine ordered the group.

"Huh?" asked Fred.
"Get down!" Jean grabbed him and pulled him to the ground just as one of the robots fired a blue energy beam at them.
"Boy, this chick doesn't play around, does she?"

"You ain't kiddin', bub." Wolverine said, his adamantium claws fully extended.
Inside the compound...

Todd heard the shots and moved up to the front of the cell, trying to see what was going on.
"Is someone here?" the girl asked. It was the first coherent sentence she had spoken in over an hour.
"I dunno. I hope they're on our side."

Mystique and Storm fought off a swarm of robots while Cyclops, Avalanche, and Blob tried to sneak around them to find out where Toad was being kept.


"I've found her," Xavier said.
"Where?"
"She's in an old building on the edge of town. It used to be a furniture store." A map popped up on the holographic display.

"Then what are we waiting for?"

Xavier pointed. "See those little dots?"
"What about them?"
"I've got a team there already."
"What? How?"

"Brenda's established a psychic link with Toad," Xavier said, "and used it to guide the X-Men along with Toad's friends to where he's being incarcerated..."
"Can this display be downloaded to the Blackbird's control panel?" Magneto quizzed him.
Xavier cast Magneto a puzzled glance. "I suppose so..."
"Good. I suspect that where we've found Toad, we may find Michaela as well..."

"C'mon," Toad said to his cellmate, "we're getting out of here, yo."

The girl straightened up. Something flickered across her features for a moment, something that looked like hope.
"Daddy?" she whispered.

"Not quite," Cyclops said, "but we might be able to help you find him. Right now, though, we need to get you two out of here."
"Suits me, yo." Toad said, hoisting his cellmate onto Cyclops' back. "Where's the rest of your crew?"
"Outside going twelve rounds with Lady Headcase's buddies."

Michaela watched in alarm from her private study as the battle transpired outside her compound. Her robot defenses were being decimated by the X-Men and their companions, and at the rate things were going she was in danger of losing her two prized mutant subjects....

It was time to call in the reinforcements.
She flicked a switch. What looked like a display case on the far side of the room swung open, revealing a narrow passageway. At the end of it was a barred cell. Inside the cell was . . . her last resort.
"How's Mummy's little precious?" she cooed.
The thing inside the cell didn't even look human. Michaela had reworked its DNA so much that technically it wasn't human. It looked like the offspring of a snake and a goat, with some bear thrown in for good measure.
She hadn't given him a name. She couldn't afford to become attached to it, even if it had begun life inside her own womb.
"Time to come out and play."