(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."
