The bar was not in any way special, or different from the last few they had visited. The lighting was bad, the smell worse. It was a heavy mix of sweat, smoke, perfume and spilled beer with just a hint of a reminder coming through the open door that the toilet was out of order. Music was playing loud enough for conversations to have to be shouted. At several of the small, round tables people were playing cards, and angry and indignant shouting erupted from one of them every few minutes. Suspiciously regularly, in fact, as a hooded figure in the corner had noted.

The beer Toad was nursing was getting too warm for his taste, and still there was no sign of the target. There were plenty of dodgy conmen, but all of them were human so far. And they had been here long enough to make certain the target was not going to show, he could tell by the state of mind of the girl. He gave the empty glasses in front her an annoyed look, but she didn't notice. She seemed to be fascinated by the conversation between two women at an adjacent table. They evidently weren't going to make any progress here. He emptied his glass, and grabbed her arm.

"We're leaving. Now."

She giggled a little, but followed him willingly enough. The air outside was hot and humid, and not as refreshing after the interior of the bar as he had hoped. Still, it was outside air, if not the fresh kind. The street was surprisingly quiet. There were no cars driving by, but then he assumed most of the people who were awake at this hour probably weren't in any condition to drive. There were a few groups of rather too drunk people walking unsteadily in groups, but they weren't the talkative kind. The way they walked, that slow, unsteady gait, made him think of zombies. And although he quickly disregarded this theory, he remained somewhat uneasy. It was a Saturday night, there ought to be more people, more noise. Unless, of course, there was something about this neighborhood he didn't know. He tried to ignore the feeling, and kept walking.

"We- Where're we going now? New bar, right?"

"Back to the room."

"Why? This is fun..."

If Toad had been the kind of person who pinched his nose in irritation, and possibly while at it cleaned his glasses as well, he would have. Instead he looked at her, eyes narrowed and his face an expression of incredulity. There was obviously something wrong with this one.

"D'you think this is about 'aving fun? D'you think this mission is jus' an excuse for you to get drunk on Magneto's money and act like a fuckin' idiot?"

She looked at him, brow furrowed in concentration as she seemed to deliberate her answer carefully.

"Yeeees?"

He sighed, and walked on. This was going to be a long stake out.

.

It felt good to be drunk again. It had been far too many years since last time. It felt nice to be able to choose what dodgy stuff to put in her body again. Freeing, somehow. And yet that wasn't the only thing. She had gotten so used to always being injected with various drugs that it felt a bit odd, having a clear head. It felt good, it mostly did, she told herself that, but it left her mind free to begin all sorts of pondering. The pondering wasn't good. The pondering wound up leading to incomplete memories, hazy pictures, and a sort of awful realization that she had completely and utterly wasted four years of her life. Not voluntarily, of course, but still. It wasn't a comfortable feeling. So she would enjoy the alcohol infecting her blood for the moment, though her companion seemed less than thrilled. He had explained to her in detail why she should absolutely in no way be drunk when they were on mission, and he had threatened to send Sabretooth on her, but it had been little use. She wasn't in a mood to be yelled at. Or at least, not in a mood to listen.

She stared dreamily into space as she walked, occasionally stumbling over discarded beer bottles, and was rather startled when she was violently yanked into an alley. Toad motioned to her to not move with a somewhat threatening glance. She opened her mouth to ask what all this was, but a hand clamped over it. It was an oddly cool and dry hand, considering the weather. She looked questioningly at him. He pointed out of the alley, towards a figure across the street. It was a man, a young man. He was wearing some sort of long, brownish coat. His skin looked tanned, and his hair was brown, and there was something faintly wrong with his eyes, which Claudia couldn't put her finger on from this distance. The young man appeared to be carrying some sort of long stick which he seemed to fold away as he reached a darkened storefront. He looked around, but didn't seem to notice them, and started fiddling with something in front of the door. Claudia turned away for a moment, then, to silently ask Toad why they appeared to be watching a common robbery. His brow was furrowed in confusion, or possibly concentration, she couldn't tell. They shone yellow in the light of the lamp posts, as did his skin. For a moment his face looked almost like a human face in yellow light. Well, not quite. A small reflection of purple appeared, and grew. In her somewhat slowed state of mind, she didn't react quickly enough to turn around actually see the small explosion.

"Wh-" she began to ask, but was quickly silenced by a rapidly drying lump of slime landing over her mouth. Toad gave her a somewhat apologetic look, as he used both hands to fiddle with something that looked like a ridiculously complicated camera. He held it up, and captured film of the coated gentleman as he entered the now severely damaged store and began to rummage around in something unseen. Toad kept the camera running for a few minutes whilst the man presumably moved around the store, and followed him with it after he emerged, until the man disappeared into an alley. He clicked it off and slid it into a pocket before turning to Claudia. She angrily moved the upper half of her face in ways meant to imply threats. Somehow he seemed less than terrified. He did remove the slime, though, with a quick punch which somehow managed to break off the slime without knocking out her teeth. She rubbed her face gingerly, trying to massage out the numbness.

"That is so disgusting. That stuff got in my mouth!"

"'Ow d'you think I feel all the bloody time," he retorted. She had no acceptable come back to that. "Did your tiny brain manage to notice that our target just used 'is powers right in front of us?"

"Yu-"

"Didn't think so, nah. But 'e did, and we're goin' after 'im. But no' tonight."

.

They got back to the motel without incident. The girl in the reception, a blonde, bored looking twentysomething, frowned at them as they walked past, but a threatening glance from Toad kept her from commenting. Their room was warm and stuffy and had, as far as he could see, not been disturbed. Good. He didn't think anyone would actually bother going through it, but he still made a habit of checking every time he went out. When he had made absolutely sure several tiny objects strewn around the room had not in anyway been moved, he opened a window. Turning on all possible light, he hopped onto his bed and waited expectantly for the snacks to start flying in. There were some perks to being this far south. As he crouched there, catching the various insects foolish enough to enter on his tongue, he noticed Claudia watching him intently.

"Wot?" he asked, giving her a stare that might have been menacing had not a fly been stuck in the corner of his mouth. He knew people found his habit of eating both insects and other things disgusting, but that didn't keep him from finding free snacks. It didn't quite keep him from being annoyed at their revulsion, either, although he told himself it didn't matter. No one was going to think particularly well of him anyway, he reasoned, so there was no point in him repressing some of his less appealing traits. He could and did eat normal food, of course he did. Anything else would be stupid and impractical. There was something, though, about catching a living being and feeling it die as his diminutive teeth crunched its exoskeleton. It tasted satisfying.

"Are you cold blooded?" she asked then, confusing his train of thought. That was an oddly moralistic question coming from a drunken escapee from the federal government. He frowned, giving his answer some thought.

"S'pose you could say so, yeah. The X-Men certainly do. I mean, it's no' as if I don't 'ave a conscience, it just isn't very active... I-"

"No, I mean, like physically," she interrupted, "biologically. Like toads are."

The question again took him by some surprise. Was he? While it was true that he was rather bad at regulating his body temperature in any sensible way, and that he got extraordinarily sleepy on cold winter days, he didn't think so. Not quite, anyway.

"Just curious... I tried reading some of those really dull, sciency books on mutation back at headquarters. They're ridiculously boring, but what the- what they say about the different kinds of mutations is kinda interesting. All that stuff an originally human body somehow suddenly can do... It's kinda awesome."

He cocked his head at her, and wondered for a moment whether she was in fact five years old. Her vacant gaze at the ceiling and the fluttery hand motions she used to underline her points certainly suggested that she was. That sort of wonder at the magics of mutation was certainly not what he had experienced growing up. Being yellowish green and warty was not as amazing as, say, invisibility. Especially not to little kids with rocks. He shook his head. This was not a time to be reminiscing. This was a time to be planning. He fished the recording device out of his pocket, started it up, and began to go through the targets odd breaking and entering.

Author's note: I'm sorry this took so incredibly long. Summer and vacation and all that stuff, you know. I'll try to be faster the next time.