(Continued directly from last post)
"I want a model rocket," Annie demanded, leaning forward so far that she'd have fallen over if Creed hadn't been holding onto her overall-straps. Creed tightened his grip on that convenient handle, and thought harsh thoughts at Cyclops. Why couldn't he have interested her in something easy that didn't need assembly, like toy guns? "Well...." Annie pushed forward, physically dragging him a few inches closer to the toyshop. "Pleeeeaaase?" Creed wavered. "I dunno..." He looked down. Clarice was standing beside him, being a good girl and not running off anywhere.... and giving him the cutest, widest eyed, most hopeful look he'd ever seen. "Wanna go look at the toys?" he said resignedly. Clarice nodded, and he let go of Annie's overalls. She fell over, and glared at him. "Oh, okay. But don't break nothin'!" He followed them into the toyshop gloomily, wishing they were old enough to have a nice, easy-to-deal-with interest in drugs and wild dancing. "Oooh! Ooh!" Annie raced up and down the aisles, grabbing toy after fascinating toy, only to abandon it the minute the next one caught her eye. "Daddy, I want a racing car! And oooh! Can I have one of those singing fish things? And-" Creed refused to be won over by the cuteness of being called 'Daddy'. She'd only picked it up from TV. "You can have ONE toy," he said firmly. He'd learned this from TV too. You couldn't buy them as many toys as they wanted. They could have one. Yes. One. That was how you did it. "But..." Annie looked around at the cornucopia of potential purchases and gave him a pathetic look. "But there's so MANY!" "One," he said firmly. "I mean it." Annie did another circuit of the toystore, slower this time, obviously struggling to decide on just one toy. That'd hold her for a while. Belatedly, he remembered that he'd brought another kid in with him, and looked around for her. Clarice was in the soft toy section, systematically picking up and hugging every teddy-bear they had, one at a time, then putting them back. Creed cracked a small smile. She was such a good kid. Quiet as a mouse and always doing just what she was told. "Like the bears, huh?" She nodded, looking around and giving him a little smile. Her hand lingered on one particularly sickening fuzzy creation, with pink fur, blue eyes, and a little pink and white dress. Creed tried not to make a revolted face. Ur, yuck.... "Ya like that one?" he asked, a bit forlornly. Clarice nodded. She had an unhealthy fascination with the colour pink, Creed had realized, despite all Annie's efforts to convince her of the virtues of yellow or green. "It's pretty," she whispered shyly. Creed wavered. It wasn't like she was actually HIS kid. She was technically a ward of the school. And presumably one of the simpering women they had hanging around bought toys for the kids. Probably dozens of them. Then he took another look at the quiet, too-old little girl, and sighed. Oh, what the hell. "You can have it if you want it," he said, with what was, for him, noble self-sacrifice. Clarice did her thing where she lit up like a little pink bit of neon. "I can?" "If that's the one ya want." He thought wistfully of the Good Old Days, when he'd still run with Magneto and there'd been plenty of booze and violence and cheap women. He'd been... well, not happy, he wasn't sure if he'd know happy if it bit him... but he'd enjoyed himself. Now suddenly there was a whole new set of instincts kicking in. He was pretty sure he'd never wanted to be a father. Anything longer ago than twenty or thirty years faded into a haze that he was pretty sure was a period he'd spent eating raw pigeon and yowling at the moon, but parenthood was something that, even then, couldn't have held much appeal. Now here he was, buying toys and promising to let Clarice go see some sickening Disney movie about dalmations while he and Annie went to something with plenty of healthy violence in it. And he kept feeding them. And he'd even, to his eternal shame, gotten up once to see if the noise he'd heard was one of them wandering around in the middle of the night. He didn't *want* to discover he had a soft, vulnerable underbelly, or whatever it was you called the parenting stuff. It just seemed to be automatic, like ripping the testicles off any guy stupid enough to hit on a broad that Creed was hitting on first. You had kids, or cubs, or whatever his instincts thought they were, and suddenly you got tangled up in all this caring shit. And he was trying as hard as he could to hate it, and he couldn't do that, either, because in some fundamental way he was doing what his subconscious knew was the right thing for him to be doing. In fact, he had a horrible suspicion that it was making him happy. And on *top* of all that, Clarice was hugging him! "Yeah, yeah..." he patted her shoulders awkwardly, then pried her off. She didn't seem to mind, just gave him a big smile, still clutching the bear. "Go tell Annie to hurry the hell up, or I'm leaving her behind." * * * "You need to puke again?" "Mmm." "Orright, come here..." Jonny gave his friend a sympathetic look, and held the lank blonde hair back as Kyle lost another meal down the hole in the floor that served them as a loo. They'd gone back at least a week's worth of meals, so far. "That bad?" Kyle curled up on the floor, making a weak gurgling noise. "Ever had... a t'kila hangover?" Jonny nodded, making a face. "Good. Ever had... oh, god... a god-what-the-hell-did-I-drink hangover? Bottles wi' worms an' stuff?" "Oh, god. Only once." "Combine 'em. And throw in ge'ing your head bashed onna bar a few times." Kyle whimpered pathetically. "That stuff's bloody awfu'..." "I know." Jonny's reactions to the new 'stuff' that was being tested on them, oddly, hadn't been nearly as severe as Kyle's. Mostly he just had a splitting headache, and an odd tingly feeling in his stomach. Kyle seemed about ready to retch up the claws on his toes. "Want some water?" "Yeh..." "Got a theory," Jonny offered tentatively, going to get the water. There was a little plastic spout thing that came out of the wall. If you pressed the button, water came out. If you broke it, it didn't get fixed for days, so you were careful with it or you went thirsty. He managed to get a bit of the water into the small plastic cup Kyle'd nicked from the last round of tests but one - they'd known, presumably, but a cup was hardly a deadly weapon, so they'd let them keep it - and he brought it to his friend. "Fairy sips, mate, or you'll puke again." "Know that." Kyle sucked up a miniscule amount of water, and gave the younger boy a vaguely interested look. "Wha' theory?" "This stuff... I reckon it does something to mutants. That's why they're testing it on us." Jonny squatted next to him, touching his chest where, until this last series of tests, an odd contraption had been fastened. "I can sort of tell what people are thinking, a bit. That's why they put that thing on me, so I couldn't do it to them. Now, though... they took it off, and I can't hear a bloody thing. Even less than I could b'fore me powers kicked in, 'cause I always had a touch of it. Now... nothing." "M'kes sense." Kyle took another slow sip of water. "S' why'm I puking so much?" "I dunno." Jonny eyed Kyle doubtfully. "Unless yer mutant power's Super Efficient Digestion, I can't see why it'd bother you so much." "M' neither." Kyle sighed, and rested his hot cheek on the nice cool floor. "Feel sorry f'r the poor bugger they're pla'ing to use 't on, though.." * * * Logan gritted his teeth, and told himself to relax. Yes. Relax. You remember relaxing. It's what happens after that fifteenth beer. The part right before some shithead says something you gotta pound him for. Remember that part? His body thought about that for a minute, and came back with the assertion that there had been no beer, so he obviously couldn't mean it. I do too bloody mean it. Don't make me do something nasty to you. It's a nice day, and look, there's Marie, all cute and big eyed, like one of those revolting toddlers on a cheesy calender, and we're teaching her to play poker. This is a Relaxing Thing. So relax. Fuck you, his body told him, his instincts making affirmative noises in the background. There's something wrong. You know it and we know it. Get off your fat ass and go search the perimeter. I already did that. Four times. And I've turned on all the security doohickies, and told the Professor that I think something might possibly be going to happen. I'm not getting up again. This is the weekend. It's me-and-Marie time, without Creed's brats hanging around. Fine. Be like that. Don't say we didn't warn you. "Logan?" Marie gave him a puzzled little look. "Are you okay?" "Yeah, fine." He gave up on the argument with himself, and focused on the cards again. "Okay, now remember, never palm the face cards or the aces. People remember playin' those. Go for the high half o' the number cards, out of the cards that get discarded, and try for pairs and flushes. Most folks don't pay much attention to the eights and nines, unless they got a pair or something." "Right." Marie nodded. She'd lost so much of her pocket-money to Bobby, John, and the new kid, Remy, in illicit late-night poker games that all the other teachers either didn't know about, or pretended that they didn't, that Logan was insisting that she had to learn how to cheat properly. "And *I* pay attention to every card that's in my hand, right?" "Right. And don't be afraid to sing out if a card you know was in your hand a minute ago shows up in someone else's. Especially that Cajun kid's." Logan shook his head. "He cheats like there's no damn tomorrow, I've watched him at it." Marie nodded, although she couldn't help a teeny little sigh. He was no Logan... although she was reluctantly consigning her interest in the older man to the 'lost causes' sub-basement of her brain... but he was very cute, and very charming, and she had a feeling he'd be a bit less charming if she stopped losing so much. Oh, well. The charm was nice, but a little too expensive. "I know. I've just never been able to catch him." "Well, keep practicing and you will." Logan patted her gloved hand in a decidedly paternal manner. "Otherwise yer gonna keep losing money, and I ain't gonna keep giving you more." Which was a flat-out lie, he'd been subsidising her pocket-money for months now, but he had to motivate the girl. Otherwise she'd just keep sitting there and letting the cajun charm the eyebrows off her. It better not be anything ELSE the cajun was trying to charm off, or Logan was going to... well, if he was in a good mood, he'd beat the kid up. If he was feeling nasty, he'd make sure it got back to Summers, who'd make the whole school sit through yet another sex-ed lecture, then take Remy aside for a 'little talk'. Logan had listened in on one of those little talks, and after laughing hysterically for nearly an hour, had decided that Summers had a much nastier sense of humour than anyone was giving him credit for. "We've got a backup plan," Marie said, practicing her card-palming skills. They needed a lot of work. "If he keeps fleecing us the way he is, we're going to have Annie sit behind him and yell every time she sees him cheating." "That'd work too," Logan agreed. Annie wasn't allowed to play, since it was too easy for her to tell what the other players were thinking, but she did like to watch, and if she was told to sing out when someone cheated... well, the whole state would probably know about it. "Unless th' Cajun charms her too." Marie gave him a shocked look. "Logan, she's just a baby!" she asserted, from the mature authority of a whole four years older. "I don't think she's even noticed the difference between boys and girls yet!" She did seem a bit backward about that, now that Logan gave it thought. "Thought she would have, by now. She's what... twelve?" "Thirteen." Marie shook her head wisely. "Late bloomer, I guess. It happens sometimes." "I guess." Logan shrugged, and dismissed the girl entirely from his mind. "Okay, now, you need t' work on your bluff..." * * * Creed growled softly, but the pimple-faced kid at the checkout didn't flinch. Nobody flinched anymore. There was something about carting around a scrawny little girl with pink hair and a pink teddy, and a slightly bigger one with bouncy blonde curls, that made him non-scary. He hated that. He'd always enjoyed frightening the living daylights out of people. He sighed, paid for the beer, soda, and candy - there was still nothing like marshmallows for keeping the kids quiet - and hauled them outside. "All right, all right... back to the motel, and yer going straight to bed. I've had enough of you both for today." The girls both nodded, neither one of them making a peep. Good. They knew that when he sounded that crabby, it was best to just go to sleep and let him have time to get over it. He shooed them both towards the car. He'd put them to bed, then he'd go out. Yup. Some beer, a bar-fight somewhere... that'd help. Annie slowed down almost imperceptibly, sniffing the air, and her head tilted slightly towards the alley coming up ahead of them, between them and the car. "Dad," she murmured. "I smell 'em," he agreed, almost soundlessly. Careful to make it look casual, he took Clarice's hand, tugging her around to the side away from the alley. Annie could take care of herself, but he really needed to start training Clarice up some. Get her a knife, maybe. They drew even with the alley, and one of the men they'd scented stepped out, holding a small gun. "Hey, pops," he grinned, showing broken and discoloured teeth. Annie leaned out of the way of his breath, and Creed almost grinned. The guy smelled pretty rank. "Nice car you got back there. Tell you what - gimme your wallet, and I'll let you keep the keys, if you're polite about it." The gun tracked over to point at Annie's head. "If not..." Creed kept his poker-face, but inside, he'd brightened up considerably. Finally, something interesting to do. "Okay," he said, trying to sound harmless. "There's no need for that, look, I'm getting my wallet out..." He passed the bag to Clarice... a plastic bag full of cans made an okay club, in a pinch... and slid her behind him. "Annie, Clarice, I want you to head for the car... Just gonna sort out my business with the nice man..." Annie made a disappointed little whining sound, but she obediently grabbed Clarice and they both headed for the car as fast as their little legs could carry them. Creed let himself smile as the mugger's eyes automatically tracked to follow them, and before he looked back, a huge hand had closed around the hand holding the gun and crushed it to pulp and bits of shattered bone, and the other hand had covered his mouth to muffle the scream. His neck broke easily, and Creed tossed the body far back into the alley with one hand, sliding in after him and reaching for his accomplice... He took more time with that one, but not too long, and he wiped the blood off his hands before heading for the car and the waiting girls. There hadn't really been any challenge to it, no danger, and although it had been fun, it was all a bit disappointing, really. Even bloody, messy murder didn't have quite the same thrill anymore. He smelled something else, something familiar, and he sped up, but he was still a block away when someone or something, hard to tell in the shadows, melted up behind Annie and Clarice and started letting fly with some sort of dart gun. Creed wasn't too worried, though, because he knew Annie was resistant to most sedatives, and she was more than capable of handling a couple of whatever-they-weres, so he still wasn't running flat out when Annie made an odd noise and crumpled to the ground. Clarice actually stayed on her feet longer, clawing at the face of the one who'd bent to pick Annie up, and one of the others grabbed her too. They looked at him, shot at him and missed, and obviously decided not to risk it, turning away to run. He roared, and lunged, but the ones carrying the girls had already melted back into the shadows and disappeared... teleported?... and he only just managed to grab the last one as it tried to slip away. It was a man, wearing some kind of weird black suit. It took a while, but eventually he told Creed where the girls had been taken. A while after that, he'd told Creed how to get in, all the security codes he knew, the goals of the organization, who the other teams were being sent out to pick up, and a lot about what was going to happen to the girls. Once he had that information, Creed discarded what was left of the man... he'd bleed out soon enough... and headed for Westchester. As much as he hated to admit it, he might need a teeny tiny bit of backup on this one. * * * He found the place in a shambles, something he'd more or less expected, since two of the other targets the man had babbled about had been the sucker-skinned kid and Wolverine. He'd also pretty much expected that Wolverine wouldn't have been taken, since the teams had been sent out under the impression that all they had to do was walk up, stick a couple of darts into him and he'd fold up like a wet tissue. He hadn't. There were several detached limbs lying around the lawn... from at least two people, since there were two right arms there... and everyone was yelling fit to raise the dead. The brainsucker, of course, was gone. Kid didn't have the sense of a bird, or enough training to take down a determined mosquito. He found Logan, though, who'd been booted off into a back room to 'calm down, for god's sake' while the scout troop calmed down the other kids, and patched up the leaking attackers. Creed snorted. Either they planned to get what they needed from the men's minds... not likely, since this team HAD been prepped to face telepaths, and pain made a pretty good shield anyway... or they were going to woo it out of them with kindness. Yeah, well, it'd keep them busy. He tapped on the window. "Wolverine," he growled. The man's head snapped around and his claws popped out, but he relaxed a bit when he saw who it was. He looked down, didn't see any little heads popping up around Creed's elbows, and obviously made a reasonable assumption. "Both of 'em?" he asked, jerking the window open and sliding out of it. Creed nodded. "They weren't plannin' on taking Clarice, but she put up a fight, so they took her too." He growled unhappily. "I was too far away to get at 'em in time. Only got one." He could see Logan looking at the bloodstains on shirt and jeans, and grinned nastily. "A chatty one, though." Logan nodded. "Tell you where they are?" "Where, when, what for, and who else they want." Creed grunted. "Which is us. They get you with any of them darts?" "One." Logan shrugged. "Didn't go in, though. Just skimmed my arm. Jeannie's analyzing it now, to find out what it was." His eyes were dark. "They got Marie, though." "Figured. Whatever it is in those darts, it dropped Annie like a punch drops a drunk." Creed growled and grumbled a bit more, and he heard an answering rumble from Logan. Neither of them were happy, and when men like them got unhappy, other people got unhappy too. "They expected it to take us too. Would have, if their guys weren't such lousy shots when it comes to a fast-movin' target." Logan nodded again. "Too bad for them," he gritted out. Then he gave Creed a long look. "Why're you tellin' me all this?" Creed blinked at him. "Y' want the brainsucker back, don't you?" he asked, a bit surprised. "I want mine, too. 'cause they're mine, and nobody takes what's mine. So way I figure it, we go in, we kill everyone, we get the kids back, the scout troop never gotta know how we did it." The shorter man looked a little dubious. "What're they gonna do with the kids, anyway?" Creed told him. Logan agreed that yes, killing everyone did sound like a good idea, and he'd just go and grab some maps and stuff, right, then he'd steal Storm's Jeep, since it would be better in the mountains than Creed's Corvette, even if it wasn't quite as fast. Creed nodded, and before they went, he parked the Corvette out the front, left the keys in, and wrote 'clean it and you can drive it, one-eye' on the hood with some handy mud. (end part five)
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