A/N: For some reason I called Gilaad 'Gideon' all of the last chapter or two. I'll fix it in a bit. I must've been sleep-deprived or my meds were making me screwy…
Gilaad: Yeah right! You just forgot my name because you haven't written for me in such a long time!
Amira: Well maybe if you were memorable for something other than being a prick…
Gilaad: Look just because we decided to have a drink to salute our fallen does not make me think of you as anything but a royal pain in the ass.
Amira: If you think that you can—
Logan: What the hell happened to all my beer?!
Gilaad: Sooo…where should we run? Canada?
Amira: Mexico.
Gilaad: Canada's closer.
Amira: You want us to run TOWARDS the homeland of the nut who's about to kill us? No thank you. If Logan is what Canada produces, I'll stick with Mexico!
Gilaad: Point. But Canada has free health care…which we're gonna need!
Amira: A good point too…but Canada isn't the 'great liberal democracy' everyone says it is. Try being a Quebecois, a member of First Nations, or a baby fur seal in Canada. THEN you can tell me what you think of—
Will you just let me get on with the story?! Anyway…I forgot what I was going to say. Ah, screw it.
&&&
Roadblock, Low Light, Cover Girl, Blind Master, Spirit, and Shipwreck rushed in when they heard Emma shouting.
"What's all the commotion?" Roadblock asked before he saw Emma. "Oh. NOW I have a notion."
"Must you always make with your insipid doggerel?" Emma snarled.
"He ain't being a in-spit dog-erm whatever you said." Fred said. "He was just rhyming, like he always does."
"Someone call the pound, a bitch got loose." Cover Girl said as she reached for her side arm.
"Don't even try it." Emma glared. Cover Girl winced and grabbed her head with her hands. "That was a rap on the knuckles…don't EVER try that again."
"How…" Cover Girl winced as Low Light and Roadblock helped her up. "The inhibitors…" Emma looked at her.
"While you're little inhibitors prevent me from reading your microscopic little minds—for the moment, at least—I don't HAVE to read them in order to reduce your brain to the equivalent of an overripe tomato. Now," Emma ignored the Handlers to turn back to the Misfits (plus Rahne, Tabby, Sam, and Catseye). "Someone had better explain to me why my daughter is here and it BETTER be for a good reason."
"Look I don't know what got your panties in a bunch this time," Low Light snorted. "And frankly Emma, I don't give a—"
"MY STUDENTS ARE DEAD!" Emma roared at him, verbally this time instead of mentally—though it wasn't that much of an improvement. "BEEF! BEVATRON! ROULETT! TAROT! JETSTREAM! THEY'RE ALL DEAD! AND I AM NOT GOING TO LOSE ANYONE ELSE! TO ANYONE!!!" She glared at the Joes who were shocked, both at the usually reserved—if bitchy—outburst of Emma AND the news she brought with her.
"Someone want to fill her in?" Blind Master covered his ears. "Before I go deaf in addition to being blind?"
"Yeah, we don't want you becoming Anne Frank." Todd agreed. Everyone looked at him strangely. Even Emma was temporarily sidetracked.
"Anne Frank?" Pietro asked him. Todd nodded. (&)
"Yeah, Anne Frank. You know, the girl that was all mwaaaah until the Miracle Worker showed up and knocked some smarts into her."
"You're talking about Helen Keller."
"No I'm not. I'm talking about Anne Frank. She was deaf, dumb, and blind."
"No she wasn't. Helen Keller was deaf, dumb, and blind!" Pietro snapped.
"Are you sure?" Todd scratched his head.
"Yep."
"Then who the heck is Anne Frank?"
"She's was the—" Pietro started. Emma felt a massive migraine come on.
"ENOUGH!" Emma snapped. "You all have two minutes to tell me what I want before I just kill all of you and ask Sharon later!"
"All right, all right!" Althea held her hands up. "The truth is…Pietro is the one who ought to tell you!"
"What?" Pietro yelped. "No way am I going to—ach!" He gasped as Emma's diamond hand closed itself around his throat.
"Tell me everything. NOW."
"Shouldn't we stop her?" Low Light asked.
"You wanna get in the way of an angry, mutant mom?" Spirit looked at him. "No thank you!"
"Besides, if she has to pound one of our kids it might as well be Pietro." Roadblock sighed. "Lord knows he would do something to deserve it soon anyway."
"It's like watching Star Wars." Xi whispered to Todd as he watched Emma.
"Which one?"
"Um, I'm not sure. I think it was one of the first three movies."
"Do you mean the first three movies to come out or the first three in the series?"
"I—" Todd winced as Emma sent a painful request to shut up through his and Xi's minds.
"Go on." Emma told Pietro as she loosened her hold around his throat…a little.
"We found Catseye in Boston." Pietro gasped. "She had been attacked by some other guys. We brought her back here to recover. That's all."
"You're lying." Emma said as she tightened her grip.
"How do you know?" Lance asked.
"One; I'm a parent and a teacher so I can bloody well tell when someone is lying to me, Two; I'm a telepath you idiot. I can still sense the elevated spike in his brain when he lies…even if I can't read his mind per se…and Third; It's Pietro." She gave him a look. "He always lies."
"Oh yeah." Lance said. "Stupid question, sorry."
"It's all right. I've come to expect them of you." Emma replied. "Now Pietro tell me what you're hiding from me about my daughter."
"Well, maybe she was a little more banged up than I led you to believe." Pietro wheezed. "Maybe she had a slight concussion, a few bruised ribs—was stripped naked and psychically raped—" he muttered quietly and quickly before continuing on. "Had a couple of nasty scratches, plus her hair was a mess! I mean, I tell you I know a thing or two about hair and hers was—GAAK!" Emma tightened her grip.
"What did you just say?" Emma trembled.
"Uh, that she had some bad cuts and scratches?" Pietro said weakly.
"Before that." She seethed.
"That she had a few bruised ribs? YIE!"
"And after that! Answer me now before I twist you into a pretzel!"
"Catseye was psychically attacked!" Pietro babbled. "Someone implanted fake memories in her mind so she'd think that she was raped!"
Everyone braced themselves for what they knew was coming. It didn't help in the slightest.
"WHAT?!"
Emma bellowed in a roar that made her earlier outburst seem like a whisper. Worse still was the fury her mind radiated telepathically to everyone within a five-hundred meter radius. She wasn't even aware that she was doing it.
Imagine taking a boulder and dropping it in a lake, the ripples move outwards and may soak some animal walking along the edge. Now imagine taking a nuclear device and dropping it in that same lake. The effect was rather similar. The best description of what happened however came from Roadblock who described it like 'having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.'
Which was, incidentally, the effect described by most drinkers of the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, the best drink in the universe…not that anyone in the room had heard of it or would care if they did…save perhaps Shipwreck. Oh dear, I've gotten off the subject haven't I? Darn Misfits…their insanity is contagious! Anyway…
"Rope it in!" Althea shouted at Emma as she clutched her head in agony. "Before you kill all of us…and Sharon!"
While the former didn't present much of a problem to Emma the later most certainly did. She, with no little effort, managed to reign in her rage and its telepathic side-effects.
"Who. Did. This?" Emma demanded when everyone had managed to pull themselves back up, the pain vanishing. "I'll kill the weasel responsible for this—"
"You can start by looking in mirror." Althea said flatly. "The one who did this was—to our best knowledge—Quentin Quire. You know? The same smarmy little bastard you recruited when you had the Hellions attack Sky High? He was a member of the Hellion wannabes who attacked us in Boston. Training more squads?"
"What are you talking about?" Emma demanded in her usual imperious, this time laced with confusion. "I haven't been training any other squads of Hellions…and I certainly wouldn't have that little pissant on it!"
"Say wha—? You recruited him…" Emma gave her a look.
"Please, like any of you people ask mutants to fill out a form before you recruit them. You grab first, ask questions later. How else do you explain him?" She jerked her thumb at Pyro. Everyone looked at him.
"What does that mean?" Pyro asked.
"She's got a point." Wanda admitted.
"No seriously, what does that mean? I don't get it." Pyro blinked.
"And you never will." Angelica groaned.
"Anyway, back onto Quire…He's an arrogant, sadistic little psychopath with a bad haircut." Emma groaned. "Found THAT out after he made all the squirrels at the Massachusetts Academy think they were birds and tried to fly…they were dropping out of trees left and right. What a mess."
"You know it's funny because my uncle made a living as a taxidermist by hunting down all the squirrels in our town and stuffing them." Fred said. "He had a sixth sense of knowing when a squirrel was scared. Anyway in a few months our town was squirrel free! Of course, it got out of hand a little when he started having meetings with them and dubbed them his 'squirrel army'...but then he had to trade them to another taxidermist in order to get a stuffed golden retriever to replace the one he lost when he went for a drive and left it on the roof. Did I mention that the dog was the mayor?"
"No but I'm not surprised." Wanda groaned.
"My point is" Emma looked exasperated. "That when I found out what a screwed up bastard he was I planned to put in some mental blocks in his mind…inhibit some of his power and cordon off the more diseased parts of his mind. But the little creep found out somehow and vanished. Haven't seen him in weeks."
"Well he's running with a new crowd in Hellion uniforms." Althea told her. "Him, Mammoth from the HIVE Academy you took over, Ebon of the Dakota City Bang Babies…who else? Oh yeah, a telekinetic named Julian Keller, Empath—"
"Empath?!" Emma snarled. "I gave that little bastard the boot long ago!"
"We know. Proves even a broken watch can be right once a day." Xi murmured to Lance.
"—And Keller is one of MY students! The double-crossing little-"
"—and there was that girl with the pheromones." Wanda reminded Althea over Emma's rant.
"Oh come ON!" Emma groaned in pure exasperation. "Laurie Garrison? Her too?"
"What's the skinny on her?" Althea sighed, almost afraid to ask after the last couple of stories.
"Her father is a member of the Hellfire Club…no, not the Inner Circle," She waved off the question she knew was coming. "Not for a want of trying though. He's a mutant with the power to create pheromones that can cause anyone to do anything he wants. He used his powers to get rich and make himself a name as one of those 'You Can Be Rich Too If You Buy My Book To Success' jerk-offs."
"I hate those guys." Fred grimaced. "Why one time my cousin—"
"Don't want to hear it!" Emma cut him off. "It gets better. He's also a contender with Mystique and Magneto for the title of 'World's Worst Mutant Parent' a category the sailor isn't in only because he isn't a mutant." Emma added.
"No question." Althea nodded. Shipwreck looked offended. The Handlers didn't, for some reason.
"Anyway, Garrison sees a woman he likes. He uses his pheromones to force her to fall in love with him. He marries her and gets her pregnant. While she's pregnant she managed to become immune to her 'hubbys' pheromones and runs."
"He came after her and their daughter when he heard about a mutant girl of the right age with the same powers as her dear old dad. Sean sued his wife, used his pheromones so the judges and jurors would go his way…he even sabotaged her defense lawyer! To make a long story short—"
"Too late." Trinity called out. Emma ignored her.
"Garrison took everything his ex owned and got her locked up on kidnapping charges and enrolled his brat daughter in my school because he's a member of the Hellfire Club! If he didn't have a hand in forming these faux-Hellions behind my back I would be very surprised!"
"If you think he's such a prick why did you let him in?" Low Light demanded.
"I don't control recruitment or membership!" Emma snapped. "If I did, why is Donald Pierce still in the Club? It's certainly not for his open-mindedness or his manners or his intelligence or…"
"We get the idea." Shipwreck sighed.
"Well as informative as this is we have to figure out what to do now." Roadblock sighed. "I better go tell the General about all this, and then I'm getting plowed!"
"We'll head to back to the Institute." Emma said, putting her hand on Catseye's shoulder. "I should probably take these wayward students with me," she indicated Sam, Tabby, and Rahne.
"Shouldn't we arrest her?" Low Light asked.
"You can try." Emma looked at him. "If you think you can stop me from going back to my other daughter go right ahead."
"We should probably sort this out later." Althea sighed. "You guys go. We'll be with you soon, with any support you might need. And we'll bring your things." She said to Tabitha and Rahne.
Murmuring their thanks, they held onto Emma as she teleported herself back to the Institute.
Althea pursed her lips and blew and exasperated sigh. "Now what?"
No one had any good ideas.
&&&
(&) This routine is taken from Clerks II (c) Kevin Smith. Somehow, I just felt like this was a Misfit conversation waiting to happen.