The Gang's All Here
Soon everyone was back at the Pit. Xavier was meeting with Hawk and the others. (He was in the X-Jet waiting for the students.) It turned out Storm, Forge, Tabitha and Jamie were back at the mansion. So after a silent ride back the kids milled around in the Misfit's living room while the adults talked. The Misfits quickly filled the X-Men in on what they knew about Cobra.
"Well it looks like you've been busy," Scott looked around. "The house looks bigger."
"Yeah we did some remodeling," Lance shrugged. "We like it."
"So who's the new guy?" Kitty asked.
"Oh that's right," Todd said. "You ain't met Xi yet. He was in Japan when you guys stayed at the Pit. Xi, these are the X-men. X-men, Xi."
"Is Xi your codename or real name?" Kurt asked.
"Yes," Xi blinked.
"Just like Rogue," Althea said. "Or Jean."
"So what are your powers?" Bobby asked.
"I can turn invisible and I can tell what kinds of powers a mutant has by touching him or her," Xi said.
"Cool," Bobby admitted. "So where are you from?"
"Cobra," Xi hissed. Immediately the X-Men fell silent.
"Xi escaped from a Cobra lab," Althea told them. "He was the only survivor of this program to create the perfect assassin."
"Assassins?" Jean gasped. "That's awful."
"Cobra is ruthless," Xi told her. "Thanks to them so am I."
The X-Men started looking very nervous. "Ah…do you have any other recruits?" Amara gulped.
"Well technically…" Wanda snickered.
"OW!" Hank came down the stairs with Barney on his back. "Will you please stop bonking me?"
Barney answered by hitting him on the head again with his tiny whiffle bat and laughing. Shipwreck came downstairs as well carrying Claudius. "I told you the kid doesn't like people touching his bat!"
"This is my new brother, Barney," Althea sighed. "Also known as Beak, for obvious reasons."
"BAA!" Barney bonked Hank again happily.
"Oh what a lovely child," Hank sighed. "Well at least his arm is healing nicely."
"His arm?" Kurt asked.
"Let's just say my Dad rescued him and leave it at that," Althea told him.
"Let's put them in their little playpen," Shipwreck did so.
"Yeah so they won't bite my tail or anything," Kurt breathed a sigh of relief. "So what's the story?"
"Well the long story short is that Cobra's got this new pulsar weapon that's designed to stimulate sunspot radiation in such a way that it will encourage the birth of new mutants," Hank told them.
"Well that doesn't sound so bad," Pietro said.
"It does considering that the radiation will be harmful to everyone on earth," Hank told him. "Especially to non-mutants."
"Oh," Fred said. "That's bad isn't it?"
"Of course it's bad idiot!" Lance snapped. "You want the Joes to get fried or something?"
"No," Fred shook his head. "Okay we're in! So what do we do? Go blow it up?"
"Not exactly," Roadblock entered the room with Xavier and Logan. "Hawk sent some men to recover a few components stolen from the machine. The agent who stole them couldn't smuggle them out. Too heavy. So he managed to hide them somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains."
"Carpathian?" Todd asked. "Where's that yo?"
"Let's just say it's a popular hangout for Dracula," Shipwreck told him.
"We gotta fight vampires?" Bobby cried out.
"Oh man," Fred rolled his eyes. "And people think I'm dumb?"
"This is going to be a joint operation," Xavier told them. "We'll stay here tonight and leave in the morning."
"So it looks like we are going to be working together again," Scott sighed. "A dream come true."
"And we get to have a sleepover," Rogue groaned. "What a blast!"
"Yeah," Lance groaned. "This is gonna be fun…not!"
"Well let's get something to eat and then we'll get ready," Shipwreck said. "For tonight the girls are gonna sleep downstairs and the boys are gonna sleep upstairs, just to make sure there's no hanky panky going on!"
"I think I can trust the boys to be well behaved," Xavier said.
"It ain't the boys I'm worried about," Shipwreck glared at Althea and Wanda.
"What?" Althea asked.
"Oh tonight is going to be such fun," Logan groaned.
Next: A wild slumber party! Tune in for the insanity!