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"Who messed up my Newspaper clippings?" Todd demanded. He held up several crumpled balls of paper.
Pietro and Fred glanced up from their respective breakfasts. They shared a look then announced "Lance." It was the obvious answer since the dark haired teen wasn't present to defend himself. Todd scowled and wandered off muttering to himself only to be distracted by the TV a few minutes later.
Around five o' clock that evening Pietro stood in front of the Boarding House and glared at the empty spot where Lance usually parked his jeep. "He should have told me he was going somewhere." Pietro complained. "He should have made sure I didn't want to drive anywhere first."
"Has anyone seen Lance?" Wanda asked two days later. "He was supposed to drive me to the grocery store today."
Fred and Todd exchanged an uncertain look. "Haven't seen him." Todd said, he sounded a little concerned.
"Yo, Pietro when's the last time you saw Lance?" Todd asked while the group was eating dinner in front of the TV that evening.
"Wednesday, why?" Pietro asked.
"Because none of us have seen him since then." Todd said.
"He's probably off sulking somewhere." Pietro said dismissively. "He's been in a bad mood ever since I came back to the team."
"Somehow I doubt that's a coincidence." Wanda said as she shot a glare at her brother.
Two days later Pietro came into the kitchen and found Todd and Fred with a stack of fliers. They were pouring over a map of Bayville. "I'll take everything east of the school, that's the half-way point." Todd said. "Don't put up more than one flier per block okay?"
"What'ya doing?" Pietro asked. He snatched up one of the fliers. He recognized the picture of Lance from the subway wreck, the flier read: "Have you seen this person, 5'10", brown hair, brown eyes, answers to Lance Alvers or Avalanche. Call 608-778-5901 with any information."
Todd grabbed the flier back. "It's been a week." He said defensively.
"What? You think he's wandering around town like a lost pet?" Pietro asked sarcastically.
"At least we're doing something." Fred said accusingly.
"Something stupid. I've got a better idea. Let's go attack the X-Geeks."
Wanda joined the other three in the kitchen. She stood against the wall her arms crossed over her chest.
"What for?" Fred asked.
"Well it's obvious: They took Lance." Pietro stated.
"Why would they do that?" Wanda asked sarcastically.
"They're our enemies, that's why. Besides who else would want Lance?"
"Apocalypse." Wanda hissed.
"Anti-Mutant groups." Todd suggested.
"The government." Fred added.
"Well we don't know where to find any of them." Pietro pointed out.
"We know where Apocalypse is." Wanda said.
"And if we went there we'd get squashed, just like Magneto." Pietro replied. "So how about infiltrating the X-Geeks' Mansion? We'll sneak in, rescue Lance and trash the place."
Todd and Fred considered their options. "We'll hang up fliers first. We can sneak in better after dark anyway, yo."
"Count me out." Wanda said and left.
"While you guys do your fliers I'll come up with a brilliant strategy." Pietro said. He sat down at the table to think while Todd and Fred gathered up their supplies and left.
That night the trio crouched at the perimeter of the Xavier estate.
"So what do we do?" Blob asked.
"I'm faster then their security system. I'll run in and turn it off. Gimme a minute, no thirty seconds then come after me." Quicksilver instructed.
Toad and Blob looked at one another then shrugged. "It ain't like we got a better plan." Toad said.
Quicksilver darted past the mansion's sluggish defenses and made his way to the control panel in the main hall. Once there he started randomly pounding on buttons. After several seconds he paused once he realized that he didn't have a clue as to how to shut thing down.
Outside Toad and Blob counted down the seconds then charged after Quicksilver. The lasers sprang to life. Toad ducked behind his large, invulnerable friend. "This wasn't in the plan!" He exclaimed as the pair charged ahead.
Blob gulped. Toad peeked around him and saw Storm hovering before them. There was lightening crackling around her hands. "Shit!" Toad swore.
Inside the mansion Quicksilver smashed his fist into the keyboard trying to shut off the alarms. A heavy hand descended on his shoulder. "Looking for something kid?" Wolverine asked in a threatening growl.
Quicksilver wriggled free and sprinted out the door. He disappeared into the night.
"Our fearless leader," Blob commented with a roll of his eyes as he and Toad watched the Quicksilver-colored blur race for the hills.
Toad sucked in a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. He didn't come out from behind Blob's protective mass. "Give Lance back and we'll leave without starting anything." He said.
"You have already started something." Storm announced regally as various X-Men appeared. They looked half-dressed and out of sorts after being drug out of bed in the middle of the night.
"We want Lance!" Todd demanded. Storm answered his challenge with a lightening bolt that sent both boys scurrying for cover.
When they saw the pair routed the X-Men stumbled back toward their beds and interrupted sleep.
"What was that all about?" Kitty wondered.
"Some nonsense about Avalanche." Storm said as she settled to the ground beside the girl with a yawn.
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"Alright, a direct attack might not have been the best idea I ever had." Pietro admitted. "They out number us five to one or something."
"Plus they got adults." Todd said. "And you ran out on us, yo!"
"I'm seeing a pattern in that." Fred complained.
"Look, I have a better plan." Pietro said. "They have a hostage so we get a hostage."
"Okay, you're making sense now." Todd said. "We grab one of the little, harmless ones and they'll have to give Lance back. They're good guys, it's like a rule or something."
"So who are we gonna nab?" Fred asked.
"How about Multiple. He's 12, how much trouble could he be?" Pietro said.
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"Hank I thought you were taking Jamie on a field trip to the aquarium?" Xavier asked a frown on his face.
Hank looked up from the book he had been reading with a slight smile. "He was kidnapped by the Brotherhood. I'm expecting a call any minute."
Xavier noticed Hank was reading "The Ransom of Red Chief."
"Do you really think that is a viable plan?" He asked with a gesture toward the book.
Hank smiled wolfishly. "Jamie was in quite a mood today. I think he must have found one of the other student's sugar stashes."
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"Grab him!" Pietro yelled.
"Which him?" Fred demanded. He looked from the Jamie who was jumping on the bed to the one sliding down the banister, to the one racing down the hall handing out pixie sticks. Fred could hear the creak of the chandelier where one or two more Jamies were probably swinging. Todd yelped in a way that meant someone slammed a door on his tongue.
"Any of them!" Pietro shouted.
Fred lunged for the one on the bed. There was a soft pop and three more Jamies appeared then ran off giggling.
"Shoo! Get out of my room! Shoo!" Pietro exclaimed as he pushed several Jamies out his door.
"Gimme back the phone you little maniac, maniacs, whatever!" Todd demanded as two Jamies ran around him. They tangled the phone cord around him until Todd fell over, bound hand and foot. Then Jamies ran off to find something more entertaining to do.
Wanda turned as she heard the door to her room opening. She glared at the multitude of identical brown-haired boys. Without a word they closed the door and backed away.
Todd managed to free one arm and dialed the Xavier Institute. "Hello, this is Hank McCoy speaking. How may I help you?" Beast answered in a disgustingly cheerful voice.
"Yo, this is Toad. If you want Multiple back…"
"Not quite yet." Hank interrupted. "I'm extremely busy at the moment. A more detailed translation of the hieroglyphics from the Sphinx just arrived."
Todd stared at the phone unable to believe the blue furred mutant had hung up on him.
"Hey come back with my sandwich!" Fred yelled.
"Ow! Cut that out!"
"What are you doing?"
CRASH! BANG! SMASH!
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Hank hummed cheerfully as he poured chemicals from one beaker to another. He watched the combined liquids hiss and bubble as they mixed.
The phone rang. Hank picked it up.
"We babysat the brat all day!" Toad snapped. "In payment we want Lance! NOW!"
"I'm sorry?" Hank said. He sounded a bit confused. "What are you talking about?"
"Lance! He's gone you must have taken him!"
"Todd, are you saying that Lance is missing?" Hank asked with concern.
"Don't play innocent with me, you took him!"
"When was the last time you saw him?"
"You have to have taken him!" Todd insisted. Hank sighed at the desperation underlying the freshman's voice. "If you don't have him, how are we supposed to get him back?"
"Todd calm down. I'm going to come over to collect Jamie. I want you to have your whole group there so I can question you about Lance's disappearance."
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While the Brotherhood was having fun with Multiple Kitty found herself starring at one of Todd and Fred's fliers. "Do you think something really might have happened to Lance?" she asked.
Scott shrugged. "I haven't seen him since they caused the train wreck. I still can't believe that the Looserhood was stupid enough to pull something like that. Half the town could have been destroyed."
"Lance stayed helped us stop that from happening." Kitty said quietly. "That should have counted for something." She pulled down the flyer and started back toward the Mansion to show it to Professor Xavier.
"I'll set up Cerebro to make special note of any use of Avalanche's power." Xavier said. "However, with the pressing danger from Apocalypse, we simply don't have the resources to do more."
Days stretched into weeks then months and Cerebro never detected the slightest trace of Lance's existence. Todd fell into a ritual of accidentally on purpose bumping into Kitty every few days to ask if there was any news about Lance. After a while words weren't even necessary. Their eyes would meet and Todd could see his answer in her somber gaze.
A year passed. Apocalypse fell. Magneto returned. Jean went to college while Scott took on more adult responsibilities in the X-Man. Wanda regained her memories and left. Evan regained control of his mutation and came home. Rogue graduated and Kitty became a senior. Pietro became a full-fledged member of Magneto's primary team while Colossus defied his former master and joined the X-Men. Kurt stopped wearing his image inducer and Logan left the X-Men to spend more time away from civilization with the girl who'd been known as X23. Kelly was elected in a landslide after narrowly escaping assassination at the claws of Sabretooth. Bobby, Amara and Sam joined the ranks of the X-Men while Paige Guthrie, Jonothon Starsmore and Xi'an Coy Manh became the Institute's newest class. Gambit, Berserker and Boom Boom left their respective teams to follow a hard-edged mercenary known as Cable. He claimed to believe in Xavier's dream even while his extreme methods shocked and dismayed the X-Men. And Pyro published an extremely sappy romance novel under an assumed name; it topped the bestseller list for three weeks running.
"Time don't stand still." Todd said as he and Kitty parted ways. Kitty stopped and glanced back at him. "I miss Wanda." He said. "I'm going after her. There's no guarantee I'll ever see her again if I just wait. Fred says there's nothing left for him here. He's going home… Lance ain't ever coming back. We'll be at the crater sight at sunset tomorrow. We thought you might want to come say goodbye too. Bring something that reminds you of something about him. It ain't like we've got a body to bury."
The fading sunlight glittered off an expanse of sand melted into glass. Even after a year the stretch of tracks where Avalanche had buried the explosion still looked like a fresh scar on the land. Kitty met the last two member of the Brotherhood there. They had been her first enemy as an X-Man. Today was their last day in Bayville.
Fred quickly dug a deep hole beside the crater. Todd sat an empty box beside it then solemnly laid a stack of detention slips in it. "For all the trouble we got into together and all the fun we had doing it." He said.
"I wasn't sure what I should bring." Fred stammered uncertainly. He set a battered, homemade checkerboard in the box. "You remember when I had that really bad cough and couldn't sleep? Lance stayed up with me, we played checkers."
"That's good Freddy." Todd reassured the older teen.
Kitty stepped forward and added the X-Men uniform from Lance's very abbreviated career as with the team. "For the most insane, incredible, sweetest thing Lance ever did to impress me, and because he was a better a better person than anyone gave him credit for being."
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A continent away Lance watched the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. A textbook lay forgotten in his lap. His hands were cracked and rough from working at a cannery to pay the rent while he took classes at night to try and to get his GED.
Once the last of the light was gone Lance tucked his books under his arm and started the long trek back to the glorified closet he called home. It was a little efficiency that shared a bathroom with one neighbor and a kitchen with four.
He put his shoulder to the warped door and forced it open after turning the key in the lock. As he entered the room Lance wrinkled his nose a little at the smell of mold. The room was dark and dingy and he spent as little time there as possible, but it was a place to sleep and it was in his price range.
Lance ran his fingertips over the frames of the three pictures sitting on top of his dresser and smiled a little. On one side they represented lonely evenings spent doing stupid sentimental things like writing letters to the newspaper in Bayville, the school photographer and the counselor at Camp Ironback. But they also represented the part of his life in Bayville that he wanted to keep close. The first picture was of the Brotherhood. The one taken right after the subway wreck when their actions had still been innocent and genuine. Then there was the picture of himself and Kitty from the Sadie Hawkin's Dance. Once in his life he'd thought everything might work out. Then Mystique came back and he screwed up the best thing that had ever happened to him. The last picture was of both teams on top of Mount Humiliation. A moment's truce and maybe even more importantly a reminder of a day when they hadn't been fighting as heroes and villains or soldiers for Magneto and Xavier's ideals. For once they'd just been a bunch of kids competing for bragging rights. Lance shook his head; he almost could have liked Summers that day when he'd stopped acting superior and just played the game. For one day the Brotherhood and the X-Men had pitted their powers against each other in a game barely more serious than the last time one of the X-Men's new recruits had yelled 'Mutant Ball'.
Lance headed into the kitchen and started some water boiling. He was glad he and the other four people in the efficiency had decided a phone was a luxury they couldn't afford. He knew having one in the apartment would have been too much of a temptation. Lance knew if he called, if he heard any of their voices he'd turn around and go home.
Working a minimum wage job and not supplementing his income with theft while trying to go to school was harder than he'd thought it would be. Being the only mutant again after being part of a team for so long made him lonely and wanting to keep his mutation a secret made him reluctant to find new friends. But there were pluses: Just a few more months and he'd have the GED. Then maybe he could start looking for a better job. Most importantly what he did with his life was his choice. There was no one here to take that away from him. No one to manipulate or use him. No one to push him into situations where could end up killing someone. He certainly wasn't a hero and he probably wasn't even a good person Lance thought. But that was one line he didn't want to cross. That was why he wasn't going back to Bayville; he'd come too close already. If he had stayed there would be blood on his hands someday, probably sooner rather than later.
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