As Rahne and Catseye were battling for control of the teleportation watch, the evil terrorist organization called Cobra was busy planning their latest caper.
"This is stupid." Zandar complained.
Well, they were trying to.
"Shut up! This will work I tell you!" Cobra Commander snapped over the screen. The Dreadnoks were the only ones physically at their location, seated around a large table, looking up a large video screen where the image of Cobra Commander, the Baroness, Destro, Dr. Mindbender, and the Twins were being broadcast. Cobra Commander continued on. "This is the perfect spot to begin our campaign for world domination!"
"What, Cleveland? Who would ever want to invade Cleveland?" Zanya asked.
"Look, who's the most diabolical terrorist leader in the world hmmm?" Cobra Commander asked. "You? Your father? That Saudi psychopath? As if! I'm the world-class terrorist here."
"Then why is everyone after that Saudi guy and—OWW!" Ripper yelped as someone kicked him under the table. Cobra Commander seethed.
"Look, don't get me started on that guy! He's ugly, he's dumb, and he cheats at cards! He still owes me fifty bucks! He better hope the Americans catch him before I do!"
Destro cleared his throat. "If we may get back to the matter at hand, Cobra Commander…"
"Hmm? Oh yes, of course. Dreadnoks you orders are to set up a base of operations in Cleveland."
"We did that already!" Buzzer complained.
"One that is habitable for human beings!" Cobra Commander snapped. "You are then to obtain the necessary funds we need—"
"Huh?" Road Pig asked.
"Rob and steal stuff." Zartan explained.
"Oh."
"—to…Wait, what do we do next?" Cobra Commander asked his High Command.
"We think it had—" Xamot started.
"—something to do—" Tomax added.
"—with gum." The twins concluded together.
"I thought we were going to mutate people." Dr. Mindbender said.
"No that's what you do in your spare time." Destro corrected.
"Still can't get a date, huh?" Cobra Commander asked Dr. Mindbender, who turned red.
"We'll get back to you." The Baroness told the Dreadnoks dryly as the meeting on their end descended into a shouting match with accompanying brawl. Cobra Commander slammed his hands down on the table to cut through the noise.
"Look, taking over the world is a serious endeavor!"
"Wouldn't know it to look at this crowd." Zanya muttered.
"—And the perfect weapons simply don't come falling out of the sky!"
As if the words had been a signal…and they were…Rahne and Catseye teleported above the table the Dreadnoks were seated around, knocked unconscious when they fell onto it.
Dead silence reigned for about two minutes before Cobra Commander muttered.
"I gave up clown-college for this?"
888888888888
Catseye awoke with a splitting headache. She carefully blinked her eyes and sat up, trying not to be sick. She saw that she was in a cage and she wasn't alone. The strange wolf-girl she'd been fighting with was there too.
Rahne stirred too. "Ooh…No Logan, I don't want to go through the Danger Room again." She muttered wearily as she came to. She held her head in her hands. "Where…you!" She said upon spying Catseye. "Where are we?"
Catseye shrugged. "Not know."
"Great. Do you know who locked us up?" Catseye shook her head.
"Do you?" She asked Rahne. "Enemy, maybe?"
"You have no idea how crowded a field that is." Rahne sighed as she tried to tally up how many enemies the X-Men had, giving up after she ran out of fingers.
"Are you fleabags comfortable?" A voice called out in the dark. "I'd hate to think we were poor hosts. Don't want to get the ASPCA on our backs, do we?"
"Oh great, Zanya." Rahne groaned as the young leader of the Dreadnoks stepped into the light.
"Ah, so you do remember me. I'm flattered."
"Don't be. I'd remember your stink anywhere." Rahne growled.
"And here I was going to thank you Wolfsbane." Zanya sneered. "Without you we'd still be trying to take over the world with gum or some other stupid plan. Now we've got the perfect way to destroy G.I. Joe!"
"What weird girl talk about?" Catseye asked. Zanya's lip curled.
"What I mean, you brain damaged idiots, is that now we've got this!" Zanya triumphantly held up Rahne's teleportation watch. Rahne paled as she reflexively looked at her wrist where the watch used to be.
"With this little beauty," Zanya said. "Cobra can teleport straight into the Pit and blow it—and the Joes—sky high! And for selling this to Cobra Commander, I get to turn a tidy profit. So everyone wins! Except the Joes; and you when we give you over to Dr. Mindbender." She added to Rahne. To Catseye she said. "Since we can't afford to annoy the Hellfire Club, we'll just turn you over to them Catseye."
Rahne attempted to shift into her animal form and escape but found that they couldn't. "Didn't I mention?" Zanya laughed nastily. "Mutant suppressing energy is coursing through those bars. So I guess you're stuck here Wolfie. And don't worry kitty, we'll let you out as soon as we contact Ms. Frost and have her pick you up." Having gotten the last laugh, Zanya turned and walked out, leaving Rahne and Catseye alone in their cell.
Rahne bit her lip. Aside from having handed Cobra the means to attack G.I. Joe and about to be a test subject in some sick science experiment, she was stuck in a cage with a Hellion! She cautiously looked over at her purple-haired cellmate, half-expecting her to pounce and attack her for simply being an X-Man.
Catseye just stared right back at Rahne, neither one of them making a move for what seemed like a long time. Finally, Rahne decided to take a chance.
"So…" Rahne began, "You're Catseye right? Of the Hellions?" Catseye nodded.
"You Wolfsbane, of X-Men." She returned.
"That's right. I don't think we've…met before." Rahne thought 'met' sounded more tactful than saying that they hadn't had the chance to beat the tar out of each other before. "What's your name? My name's Rahne Sinclair."
"Sharon Smith." Catseye answered. "You not with X-Men when Catseye saw them." Rahne shrugged.
"I was in Scotland, at Muir Island, for a while. My foster mom pulled me out of the Institute after mutants were exposed." Catseye blinked in interest.
"Wolfsbane has foster mother?"
"Dr. Moira McTaggert, she runs Muir Island. She's my foster mother."
"Miss Frost is Catseye foster mother." She said happily. Rahne looked floored.
"Frost? Emma Frost? She's your foster mother? Well that explains why you're a Hellion at least." Catseye growled.
"Catseye worked hard to be Hellion! Not just cause Miss Frost is my mother!"
Rahne hastily backpedaled. "I'm sorry, that's not how I meant that. It's okay, I believe you. I mean, my mom's friends with Professor Xavier but I pulled my own weight…more than some X-Men I could name." Thinking angrily of the last time Bobby froze the bathroom or Ray made some crack about her animal nature.
"Teammates annoying?" Catseye queried.
"And how! They always complain when you don't act like a model of humanity…as if any of them qualify! Part of me is an animal, deal with it!" She snapped, but not at Catseye. Catseye nodded in understanding.
"Catseye knows what you mean."
"So I tore up a flower bed every now and then, so what?" Rahne asked herself.
"Why it such a big deal that Catseye use chair leg as scratching post?" Catseye wondered.
"And yes, I like to play with a frisbee. What's so funny about it?"
"I like tennis balls." Catseye admitted.
"And shedding! Every spring it's the same thing," Rahne continued.
"Teammates do nothing but complain over every little stray hair." Catseye sniffed.
"Always complaining about how much I shed, saying that I make them sneeze. But do they complain to Mr. McCoy about how much he sheds? No! Of course not!" She ranted.
"Catseye underappreciated." Catseye muttered.
"And the jokes are tasteless and stupid." Rahne growled. "If I go to the bathroom, I'm asked if I'm taking a flea bath or just marking my territory!"
"Bevatron think it funny to leave sandbox in bathroom." Catseye muttered. "When I go to shower, someone say, 'Why not just use tongue?' "
"If someone's mad they always say, 'Go chase your tail!' "
" 'Cough up a hairball!' " Catseye added.
" 'Go fetch!' "
" 'Go play with some yarn!' "
" 'Toilet breath!' "
" 'Hairball!' "
" 'Go chase a car!' "
" 'Go lick yourself!' "
"Oooh, I hate that one!" Rahne fumed. "The creeps! I bet those jerks think that by putting us down it makes them feel more normal! The old, 'We may be freaks, but they're even freakier' garbage!"
"Testify!" Catseye agreed emphatically.
"Sometimes I get such an urge to gnaw somebody's leg off." Rahne muttered, her anger mostly spent and was beginning to be replaced with a slight feeling of melancholy.
"Why fight it?" Was Catseye's answer.
"You think I should listen to my animal side more?" Rahne asked curiously. Catseye looked at her strangely.
" 'Side?' What side?"
"Well, I mean I have my human side and my animal side." Rahne answered. "Sometimes I have a hard time working my way between the two of them. I mean its hard to suppress my animal instincts sometimes…don't you ever have that problem?"
"Catseye not try to separate 'sides.' Catseye confused when Miss Frost found me and showed how change into human."
Rahne blinked in surprise. She had guessed that Catseye's—Sharon's—case was like hers. Finding out that she was a human who could transform into an animal. But Rahne was wrong. Catseye had actually lived in her animal form when she was younger, finding out only through Emma Frost that she could transform into a human. Catseye genuinely thought of herself as a cat who could become human, rather than the reverse.
"But Catseye not want to separate in two." She continued. "Maybe Wolfsbane not either."
"…I never thought of it like that." Rahne admitted. "I guess I always thought of my mutation as something to fight, to control. That's what Professor Xavier said when he brought me to the Institute."
"Why that?"
"…I guess I thought that my mutation was nothing but trouble. I was chased out of my village by a rabid preacher who thought I was a werewolf, a demon. He had the whole town ready to lynch me."
"Catseye never lived like human. Catseye thought she was only cat until Miss Frost."
"Is that when she adopted you?" Rahne asked. Catseye nodded.
"She gave me name. Both names. Now I stay at happy place with her." She said, referring to the Massachusetts Academy where the Hellions trained. "You can come too." Rahne shook her head.
"I don't really think the Hellions are for me. Besides," she went on looking uncommonly grim. "I think Cobra has other plans for me."
Catseye bit her lip. "Catseye like you. You understand Catseye. You…furfriend."
" 'Furfriend,' " Rahne repeated, tasting the word. The Scottish girl gave a laugh. "It fits anyway."
Both girls' attention was suddenly drawn to the door as it swung open. Zanya marched in, accompanied by Ripper and Buzzer. "Okay you two morons, let the purple-haired girl out of the cage, but leave the red-head in. She's got an appointment with Dr. Mindbender."
"Here kitty, kitty." Buzzer said as he opened the door, Ripper training his gun on Rahne. "Come on out." With a last backwards glance, Catseye stepped out of the cage.
"Now, let's get Emma Frost on the line and she how much she'll pay for her wayward student." Zanya said. "Hopefully she'll make sure you don't slip your leash again."
Zanya had misjudged Catseye. She thought that Catseye's poor speech was an indication that she was too stupid to know when she was insulted and didn't think that she would bond with Rahne in the short time they'd been together. On both counts, Zanya was wrong. With an angry roar, Catseye shifted into her giant cat form and leapt at Zanya, who was clearly not expecting it.
"OOOF! Shoot her you bloody idiots!" Zanya screamed. Catseye nimbly leapt out of the way. Displaying all the intelligence and craftiness that came with being a Dreadnok…Ripper had left the cage door open. Rahne bolted out, transformed into a wolf and joined the fray.
"MOMMY!" Ripper screamed as Catseye clawed at his face.
"OWW!" Buzzer said as Rahne bit his leg. "I hope you've had your rabies shot!" Rahne's only answer was to bite harder. "AARRGGH!"
The other Dreadnoks rushed in to help…and were promptly laid out. Catseye and Wolfsbane leaped at the mercenaries and started biting and clawing at them. "YOWW!" Roadpig yelped as Catseye pounced on his back.
"Oww…" Zartan moaned as he was knocked into a wall by Wolfsbane.
"I knew this was going to end badly." Zandar moaned as he too, collapsed.
"Oh shut up." His sister Zarana snapped wearily from the floor before passing out.
Rahne shifted back to admire their handy work when she spotted her teleportation watch on Zartan's wrist. "I'll be taking that back now, thanks!" She said as she slid it back on her own wrist. She looked around. "Now where's Catseye?"
Proudly, the giant purple cat trotted back into view. In her mouth was what looked like a large chunk of…hair? Rahne looked at the unconscious form of Zanya who definitely looked as though she just lost a fight with a lawnmower.
"You didn't." Rahne said, amazed and amused. Catseye shifted back to human and spat out Zanya's hair.
"Catseye need floss." She complained.
"Well…let's just try to get home, then you can floss." Rahne smiled as she adjusted the teleportation watch. "…Thank you for the rescue. But why—"
"You furfriend. Catseye need 'nother reason?" She asked.
"Well, thanks again. Now let's get back." Rahne said as she pressured the button…and ended up in the last place either one of them expected.
A/N: Now the craziness begins in full! Most chapters probably won't be this long, but I hope they will be good.