The clock had passed midnight by a few hours ago, but Claudia lay staring at the ceiling. It was, on the whole, not a very interesting ceiling. It was dark, and made of concrete and had a light bulb hanging from it. After hours of disinterested scrutiny, it had revealed no secrets. The light bulb was turned off, now, and the books she had appropriated for the purpose of boring herself to sleep lay in a disorganized heap by her mattress. None of them, dull as they were, had managed to send her to sleep. Instead, she now had a fuller understanding of the treatment of mutants in the renaissance. She closed her eyes again, and sighed heavily. There was a feeling of purposelessness here on the island, she thought. A vacuum of events. The days, though filled with both training and promises of a higher plan and purpose, seemed to lack a cert-

"Oi girlie, you awake?"

Opening her eyes, she turned to look at the door. She could have sworn it was closed a minute or two ago. And she definitely hadn't heard it being opened, it was quite noisy. Standing in the corridor outside was Toad, looking impatient. She sat up.

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, come along then, we're off."

"Off where? Or possibly what?"

"T'see the bloody wizard. Jus' come on, I'll brief ya on the way."

Bewildered, she got up and followed him, pausing only briefly for shoes. She continued asking while hurrying after him, but got no satisfactory answer, just a not entirely polite admonition to shut the hell up and hurry. She did hurry, though, and two minutes later she was climbing into the helicopter, still in the dark.

.

"It's a recruitin' mission," Toad began in explanation. In response to her blank stare he added "Meanin' we're gonna find some bloke, spy on him a bit, and make him come join us."

"Is he going to get as much of a choice as us?"

Toad looked at her, eyes narrowed, yellow irises blotting out the whites completely. Again there was this sense of resentment in them. A sense that she wasn't, to him, a proper mutant. She guessed that it had something to do with her very brief experience of being one. Or possibly that she didn't look like a mutant. She wondered, then, how he felt towards Magneto on that account.

"For most o' us there ain't much of a choice. Did ya prefer the government cell, 'cos I can drop ya back off easy."

"No, no, this is good. I mean, working for the good of mutant kind and all. Very good for my conscience so far. But it would have been nice if you'd asked, you know, and hadn't just dragged me along in the same manner as the government did. Not that I'm making comparisons." She added defensively. It was beginning to dawn on her that the flight might be more pleasant and less dangerous if she shut up. Toad's expression confirmed this with an annoyed glance.

.

Toad found the flight awkward. Claudia would on occasion try to start conversations, but he invariably glared at her to stop. New people made him somewhat uncomfortable. It was fine back on the island, mostly. He'd gotten used to them being there, more or less. But there he could just wander off. He wasn't trapped with them in a tiny room, like now. Flying with Mystique and the others he'd gotten used to; it had been necessary. But they respected and shared his preference for silence. Claudia seemed to have picked up on that, though, and had settled down into a somewhat annoyed silence. She sat with her arms crossed, staring pointedly at nothing. He didn't understand why Magneto would send her with him on a mission like this. She wasn't particularly well trained, which could be a problem, but what worried him more was her attitude to the Brotherhood, and to mutants in general. She didn't seem to feel she was one of them. Granted, she had only been with the Brotherhood for a week and a half or so yet, but he didn't think she saw herself as a mutant at all. That was why, he suspected, he resented her. The boy at least seemed to know to some degree what society felt about their kind. Seemed to have lived through at least some of it. None of them quite knew how it felt to have been born this way, though. To look not only different, but blatantly inhuman, their whole lives. He smiled bitterly at nothing in particular. Nothing to really inspire you to bash in some homo sapien heads like seeing the disgust in strangers eyes when they first see your face. And the Brotherhood let you do that. Magneto understood the hatred they felt for humanity, and shared it, for different but analogous reasons. He let them use a little more violence than might be strictly necessary on missions, facilitated the occasional random, impulsive maiming of a guard or two. Toad didn't know whether he approved or not, but it had never seemed to bother him. And he did always say how they needed to be feared before they could ever be respected...

They arrived in the city in the early parts of the afternoon, the sun high and bright. That was inconvenient. Toad had hoped the forecast of dark clouds might be right, but the two months old newspapers he had checked back on the island had evidently lied to him. He walked slumped, hood pulled so far down over his face all he could see was the pavement. His gloved hands were shoved deep into his pockets, and he had wrapped a scarf around the lower part of his face. It was far too hot for it, but he hadn't the time to be assaulted by Friends of Humanity thugs. The girl had insisted on being invisible. Not only did she have extremely UV-sensitive skin and no sun lotion, she pointed out when he asked, but an albino and a man covered from head to toe in far too warm clothes might not be the most inconspicuous thing in the world. He was forced to agree with that, and so he walked apparently alone through the busy streets. The overwhelming noise and dense crowds of people made him somewhat uneasy, and he tried to avoid them, both for his sake, and so the invisible girl would have an easier time of it. They walked like that for a while, him looking for some suitably cheap and dingy place to stay, and her doing, well, he couldn't see what she was doing, but he assumed it involving walking and looking or something. After twenty minutes or so he spotted a place awful looking enough that they might not even mind mutant customers. He wouldn't take his chances, though.

.

"Explain to me again how an organization that can afford a jet and a private island can't get two rooms?"

"I told ya, t'lady looked at me suspiciously enough already, it woulda been weird if I asked for two rooms," he explained, rapidly running out of patience. It almost bothered him that she thought him disgusting enough to mind sharing a room with him that much. That was weird. He'd mostly gotten used to people's reactions. Was probably just because she was new and had fresh amounts of dislike for him. Mystique's telling expressions must have grown stale with time, he supposed.

"Besides, I got two beds, didn't I? Separate sides of the room an' all, ya won't even notice I'm 'ere."

He sat crouched on the table by the tiny, dirt encrusted window, looking wistfully at the dead flies on the window sill. He could've used a snack. The girl huffed, and sat down on the bed in the opposite corner.

"I'm surprised you're so picky about the 'commodations, anyway. Woulda thought everyfing'd be better than tha' prison."

She drew her legs up to her chest, hugging them to her, and looked down into the sheets as though they held some fascinating secret. She frowned, and her eyes glazed over slightly.

"You would think so, yeah," she said, more quietly, "but it'd surprise you how comfortable the standard issue beds are. The cleanliness is impeccable. And there's nothing to lull you to sleep quite like a nice, cozy injection. God, I must be going mad. That wasn't even sarcasm. I genuinely miss my bed there. Maybe they synthesized Stockholm syndrome and injected me with it."

She laughed, and then looked faintly sick. He gave her a look that, if she had seen it, might have indicated to her that he had some beginning doubts as to whether she was a sane and capable mutant being. She didn't, though, so he abandoned the look and concentrated on locating the tell tale buzzing of a fly he thought he could hear somewhere in the room.

"So," she began some minutes later, in the tone of one who is attempting to break an awkward silence, "you said earlier you'd tell me more about this guy we're, uh, recruiting?"

"Yeah. Some bloke called Remy LeBeau," he replied, utterly failing to pronounce it properly. "Magneto says 'e can do some nice tricks with, wha' was it again, kinetic energy or somefing. Make things blow up. 'Cording to the file Mags gave me, 'e's a thief. 'Angs round in bars in the city. Oh, an' apparently has red and black eyes. Oughta be easy to recognize."

"What do we do, then? Spend our time barhopping til we find a guy with freaky eyes and talk to him?"

"No. We spend our time bar'oppin' till we find a bloke with freaky eyes, and then you go all see through like an' follow 'im around till we know if the X-Men've gotten to 'im. Then we talk to 'im."

"Naturally, naturally. And how will we know if the X-Men have gotten to him?"

"We'll know, trust me. An' they'll probably attack us. They're a violent lot. Last time I met 'em, this one bloke nearly killed me cos I nicked 'is shades."

"Seriously? Dude," she said, impressed. Toad thought happily about the collection of Cyclops's visors he was building up back at the island. He had six of them, now. Maybe this trip would give him both a seventh and a new recruit.

"Hmm. If we're going to be barhopping, I'm going to need some new clothes. This," she said, indicating the clothes she was wearing with a sense of intense dislike, "won't do. I don't suppose our budget, whatever it might be, will cover that?"

Toad shook his head, both in reply and reaction.

"Then I'll have to test out invisible shop lifting. I'll be back in a hour or two."

"Whatever, just don' get arrested. I'm not breakin' ya out."

She got up, and went to open the door. It seemed to close behind thin air. Toad rolled his eyes at the door, and hopped onto the bed. Might as well get some sleep before starting the mission. He laid down, closed his eyes, and with expertly trained precision shot out his tongue and caught the fly that had finally made its way out of whatever closet it had hid in. It was nice and crunchy.

.

It was still hot outside, and sunny enough to burn her infinitely pale skin beyond recognition. Maybe she'd steal some sunscreen too. She couldn't always walk around like this. Moving through a crowd when no one can see is more difficult than it might appear. People are notoriously unmindful of other people in crowds, and when they can't see you it just gets worse. She found a strategy, after a while, of finding one person, and following them as long as they were going the same way. In this manner she managed to make her way to a classier part of the city. If she were going to steal anyway, she might as well steal something good.

Her strategy, once she'd found a dark corner in which she could suddenly be seen, was to walk in as a normal customer, trying to keep her head down, and stay unnoticed. She would pick up a piece of clothing, go to the changing rooms, and never be seen again. Her invisibility, the scientists had discovered, sort of radiated from her body. In effect this meant that anything touching her bare skin when she chose to become invisible also became hidden from the naked eye. Which was useful. Very useful. It did limit the number of layers of clothing she could wear, and she had had to give up on socks in shoes, but it was none the less a step up from having to walk about naked, like H.G. Wells' Doctor Griffin. Why this was the scientists had apparently discovered, but they had neglected to hell her. She assumed it was in a report somewhere. Truthfully she didn't much care exactly why it worked, so long as it did.

Having stolen herself some proper clothes in this manner, she managed to find some person silly enough to not watch his wallet. Luckily no one in the vicinity noticed the floating, cash filled object. After finding a convenient dark corner to appear in without too many prying eyes, she emerged, counting the notes of a, she checked, Mr. J. Drake. Mr. Drake, it appeared, was a firm believer in cash over credit card, something she was grateful for. With new vigor and a feeling of wealth, her spree of crime turned into one of shopping. As she kept remembering things she had missed, both on the island and prior to that in the mutant holding facility, she filled a large shopping bag with items. She was almost back at the hotel when a thought struck her, and she bought some food and water as well. She had seen the sink in the room, and did not trust it.

When she entered the room, Toad mumbled something about bloody women, and how Mystique never was this weird. She tossed the bag with food at him, and he shut up. The sky that could be dimly seen through the window had begun to darken, she noticed, after unpacking. Toad followed her gaze, and sat up.

"If you're finished stockpilin' for the apocalypse, I think we should head out. We got a lot of bars to cover. 'Ow's your alcohol tolerance?"

Author's note: The next chapter might take a while. I think I'm going to have to actually plan it out and stuff, and not just write as I go along. But the quality'll be higher for it, I hope. On another note, I realize that I actually visualize Max from Hellbinders a lot of the time when writing Toad's dialogue. I mean,when it comes to pronunciation and occasionally word choice. But hey, all Ray Park's roles have the same accent, how wrong can I go? I also want to say thanks to you guys who've been kind enough to leave me reviews. It makes me a happy little shameless fan girl.