8. Not-so-Easy Tiger

He never really got a chance to see how long the inhibitor lasted. Ten minutes after she left, Kitty was escorted back into the room by a very angry Natasha Romanoff. Pete was then freed from his restraint by a laughing and scolding Natasha Romanoff, and they were sitting around the table drinking, Kitty looking reproached and pissed off, Pete looking sullen at being tricked so easily, and Natasha looking amused. She was filling them in on a new development.

"So we know where they are?" Kitty asked incredulously from behind her fifth cigarette in as many minutes. She tended to smoke more when she was agitated. And right now, she was agitated.

"Well then, I guess that makes your little jaunt into the wilderness completely stupid and a bit pointless, doesn't it?" Pete harrumphed from his corner of misery, his fraction of a cigarette indicating that Kitty was not the only one irked by current situation. Natasha turned a sharp eye in Pete's general direction.

"Be quiet, little man. You're in just as much trouble. But, da, her little vacation was a little impractical. The important thing is now we know where they are and we can smoke them out. No pun intended..." She gestured to the bluish gray cloud forming in the hotel room and Kitty put out her cigarette looking a bit embarrassed. Pete, on the other hand, simply lit another with the remains of the first and leaned back in his chair.

"So what now, Tash? We just go in and Rambo-style the place? I'd assume the bloody 'yes'-men could come up with a better plan than that." Natasha looked at him as if he'd just suggested that her brain proportion was comparable to some sort of dinosaur.

"Of course I have a better plan, Wisdom. You forget who taught you most of what you know."

"Never, Tash. Never. So what's the plan?"

"Well, they are using, as their basic base of operations, a small building in the heart of a small village called Falmer. It's in the South, near Brighton."

"Where's Brighton?" Kitty asked Pete but he acted as if he didn't hear her. Natasha answered her question instead.

"It's on the coast. You've never heard of Brighton Beach?" Natasha pulled a disk from her pocket. "You know what to do with this, rooskaya, da?"

"Oh yeah." Kitty tried to put Pete not speaking to her out of her mind and went to the other part of the suite to retrieve her laptop. She had expected him to be frustrated with her for catching him off guard, but she hadn't expected him to be... hurt. Yeah. That was it. He was hurt. This was odd...She shook the thought off and returned to the main room with the program loaded. It was a set of building schematics. "I've heard of Brighton Beach, Tash, but I didn't know they were the same place."

" 's a fun town." Pete finally mumbled sarcastically from his sullen corner-o'-sulk ™. "If yer 22 an' an idiot." Kitty caught the subtle jab at her, and tried to act like she hadn't. He leaned forward to look at the diagram that Kitty's computer was now displaying. He launched into 'Pete-mode' almost instantly. Kitty noticed all traces of sulk now gone from his thin face. "Right. Now, this doesn't look too different from their usual set-up. We can probably get in the back way if ninja-Pryde can do us a small favor with the guards." At Kitty's nod, he continued, "This is where everything important is going to be." He Jabbed a section of the screen with a long, pale finger. "Namely: Scratch. Possibly even Scicluna and the lap-dog, yeah? But, that's if we're lucky. Therefore, we have to plan on taking them out individually and real quiet-like, all right? Now, we can't just blow the place up again. I mean, that worked great last time, but no one that mattered ended up blown to smithereens. This time, we gotta make sure that what needs doing gets done." Pete grinned and Kitty found it infectious rather than frightening. "And then we blow the base up. After all, a team is nothing without an M. O., yeah?" Kitty nodded again, knowing that Natasha would already infer a lot of this due to her years as an operative and that most of this was directed at her. And yet, somehow, Pete managed to make it non-condescending. He always did. She had always loved that about him. Whoa, she chastised herself, Where did that thought come from, Pryde? Stay focused. You have a boy at home to deal with. Besides, this one has a tendency to walk, remember? Focus! She turned her attention back to the conversation just in time to realize that she'd missed a question.

"What, Pete?" Pete snorted and shook his head.

"Where you at, Pryde? I asked: do you think you can handle 30 or so Black Air goons should this thing go awry?"

"Oh hells yes." Kitty nodded, enthusiastic at the idea of a good fight. God, it had been too long. "I can do that. When do we leave?" Pete had to hold off on the automatic 'That's my girl' that wanted to leave his mouth. Instead he offered her a smile and a les proprietary statement.

"As soon as you're ready, luv."