“You both are SURE you know what to do, then?”

     “No problem.”

     “It’s not like we haven’t gone over it twelve times, mate.”

     “Alright, then, move! I’ll enter via the front gate, and we’ll rendezvous on the bank of the river a few miles directly south from here, next to the oak tree that’s split in half. Go, go!”

     “Hey, Lance?”

     Lance sighed. “What is it THIS time, Toad? Can’t we all just get to sleep already?”

     “Pietro’s book-readin’ is keepin’ me up.”

     “I’m being as quiet as I can! Geez, Toad, am I flipping the pages too loudly for you?!”

     “Well, you’re just flipping ‘em five times a second, is all.”

     “I read fast, you know that! And I can’t help it if I don’t sleep!”

     “Whatever. Anyway, Lance?”

     “What!?”

     “I was just thinking… how come there ain’t any fat chicks in Bayville, yo?”

     “Alright, you can go home. I’m here to take your place,” said an approaching jail guard, unexceptional in his appearance in every way.

     “About time!” grumbled the jail guard on duty at the main gate. “My shift was supposed to end half an hour ago!”

     “Yeah, sorry ‘bout that,” the other guard apologized. “There was… some bad traffic on I-85 coming in.”

     “At this time ‘a night? What’s going on?”

     “Some big car crash, it looked like. At least a dozen cars, piled up. It’ll take ‘em the rest of the night to clean up the mess, I’d imagine. You might want to take the side roads home.”

     “Well, thanks for the heads-up, I guess. See you later.”

     As one guard exited the booth next to the jail’s main gate the other entered, the entering guard turned his attention towards a pitch-black area on the west side of the jail complex. For just a split second, a jagged arc of blue lightning whizzed across the field, and then it was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

     The new guard on duty smirked and got to work.

     “Toad, of all the dumb, idiotic things you’ve asked—“

     “Aw c’mon Wanda, y’know I’m right. I mean, what’s the national obesity rate, somethin’ like fifty percent? Yet I just realized I don’t think I ever seen a girl ‘round here younger ‘n forty that was fat.”

     “Man, you better be glad Freddy’s in his own special cell,” Pietro smirked, shaking his head, “You’d have been a pancake on the wall five seconds ago if he wasn’t.”

     “Seriously, don’t you guys think there’s somethin’ up with that?” Toad continued.

     “You in position?” the new guard on duty murmured into a tiny microphone hidden in the nape of his uniform.

     “Ready.”

     “Good. John, get going.”

     Turning his attention to the well-lit parking lot, the guard saw the person he had just replaced get into a red SUV and start to back out of his parking space. Suddenly, a huge plume of fire shot out of the darkness at the edge of the parking lot a few yards from the SUV. Within a split second, the plume hit the SUV and the vehicle exploded into a huge fireball, illuminating the entire lot and much of the jail yard as well.

     Cackling insanely, Pyro kept feeding the explosion with his arm-mounted flamethrowers. Within seconds, a monstrous, minotaur-like flame creature emerged from the flames rising above the SUV wreckage, snorting fire as it roared an unearthly howl into the night.

     “So, what, you’re complaining?” Lance said, rolling his eyes.

     “Nah, I’m just sayin’… What, doesn’t this matter to anyone else?”

     “NO,” Wanda, Lance, and Pietro all said in unison.

     “Aw… well, hey, whatever, I’m just sayin’, yo… Maybe it’s somethin’ in th’ water supply or somethin’… Guess I’ll check tomorrow, ain’t nothin’ else t’ do…”

     “And how exactly would you CHECK something like that, Toad?” Wanda snorted.

     “Well, I—“

     Just then, alarm klaxons started blaring through the jail hallways.

     “Attention: All Personnel,” came a warning over the hallway intercoms. “This is a priority alert. Listen to your two-way radios for further instructions.”

     “Hey, what’s goin’ on?” Toad asked, hopping out of his bed and over the bars, looking out of their cell as dozens of guards scrambled past them. With so many of them talking, combined with the orders many of them were receiving from their personal two-way radios, it was impossible to pick out what any single one of the guards were saying as they ran past. Toad noticed that only a skeleton crew was staying behind to keep watch over their cells. “Honeybuns, you doin’ something?”

     “Don’t look at me,” Wanda replied, “My hands are still up locked tight in these stupid chafing cuffs.”

     “Three guesses who it is, then,” Lance said, as he and the others got up from their bunks and peered out of the bars as well, trying and failing to get any more information as to what was going on.

     “Mystique?” Toad said, “Nah, too early to tell, it could just be a rowdy prisoner tryin’ to escape or somethin’…”

     As soon as Toad finished his sentence, all of the lights flickered and then went dark.

     “Okay, it’s Mystique.”

     Pyro laughed as the huge flame minotaur took a swipe at the ever-growing crowd of armed guards. Whenever any guards tried to make his way around the flame creature and towards Pyro, he merely made the minotaur snort a plume in the direction of the guards, either cutting the guards off if they were careful or frying them on the spot if they were too reckless.

     A few guards stupidly fired their guns at the flame creature, though of course their bullets had no effect. Out-of-control prisoner riots, they could handle. However, nothing in their training had prepared them for huge flaming minotaur attacks.

     Mystique, meanwhile, had morphed into a crow and stood perched on top of the jailyard gate, enjoying the show. Normally, the infrared security cameras monitoring the parking lot would have noticed Pyro long before he was close enough to fry the SUV and its occupant—however, as the guard on duty she had quickly cut the feed of the cameras off at her booth where they were normally then routed to the main jail complex. Of course, to keep the personnel oblivious until the time was right, she had then input fake static images she had prepared earlier into the feed.

     Of course, the flaming minotaur was just a distraction. Any minute now, the real fun would begin.

     A couple of seconds later, the power went out across the entire prison complex—even the backup emergency power—and now the only sources of light were the flaming creature in the parking lot and a new, quickly-growing orb of electricity on the roof of the main building in the complex.

     Ah. Speaking of when the fun would arrive…

     A blue-haired female Mutant stood in the middle of the huge growing ball of blue electricity. It crackled all around her, scorching the roof under her and often lancing right through her body, but it didn’t faze her at all. In fact, that ball of electricity was coming from her—or, rather, her hands, which were covered in metal gauntlets.

     Although she her eyes had been clenched shut in concentration as she sucked the last of the power from the smashed generators into her gauntlets, her eyes suddenly opened up, small bolts of blue lightning lancing out from them. Turning towards where the giant flaming creature was distracting the guards, she pointed her gauntlets at the largest group. She noticed Pyro back away from his position behind the minotaur in anticipation. She couldn’t talk to either Mystique or Pyro anymore—her comlink was completely fried now—but they all knew what the plan was.

     Grunting, she directed the vast majority of the power she had just absorbed out of her gauntlets. A giant bolt of lightning fifteen feet across arched towards the largest group of guards, and a second later all that was left in their place was a large smoking patch on the ground. Scared out of their wits and confused as to what was happening, surrounded by a giant flaming mythological creature on one side and a person that shot lightning on the other, the few remaining guards in the parking lot outright panicked and fled in every direction, ceasing to care about protecting the jail complex anymore.

     That part of her job finished, the blue-haired Mutant channeled the remaining energy into her legs and zoomed at a superhuman speed down off of the roof.

     “Stand back,” a muffled voice commanded from behind the back wall of the Brotherhood’s cell, reaching their ears through the tiny barred window near the ceiling.

     “Wh-“

     Before Lance could finish asking his question, a blast of electricity burst into the cell, shattering a hole in the wall and sending small chunks of the wall flying.

     “Ow,” Toad winced as a couple chunks hit him in the head and chest.

     “I told you to stand back,” said a blue-haired female as she stepped into the cell, a smirk on her face.

     “Yeah, thanks for giving us a FAIR WARNING,” Lance said, looking like he was going to smack the newcomer but restraining himself for obvious reasons.

     “Hey, you!” called out a guard from the dark hallway, running over to the cell door and pulling out a gun. “Stop right there!” From the sounds further down the hallway, other guards in the area were making their way towards them as well, but at a slower pace than usual due to the pitch blackness inside and the minimal moonlight filtering in from outside.

     “Just a second,” the newcomer said quickly before sending a quick, tiny jolt of lightning lancing through the chains connecting Wanda’s handcuffs. Free at last, Wanda flexed her hands and lifted them up just as the guard fired his gun. The bullet stopped at the bars and reversed direction, the guard just barely managing to duck out of the way in time.

     “Alright, I’ve spent practically all of my charge,” the blue-haired Mutant said, backing out of the cell as other guards came up, also firing their guns. Wanda kept the rest of the Brotherhood safe as she hexed all the bullets back at the guards until they caught on and gave up on trying to stop the Mutants from escaping. “Everyone, follow me, we’re meeting up with the others elsewhere. I’ve already freed Blob, he’s waiting for us at the rear gate, after… dealing with the guards back there.”

     “Alright, she got Freddy out too!” Toad said happily, hopping up and down. Suddenly stopping, he asked suspiciously, “You’re with Mystique, right?”

     Rolling her eyes, the newcomer answered, “Yes, of course. Now come on, the jailyard won’t stay this deserted for long!”

     The rest of the Brotherhood followed her out of the hole in the wall, Toad stopping and turning around to give the guards on the other side of the bars a goodbye raspberry. He almost got his tongue shot off for his trouble.

     “There they are,” the blue-haired girl said, pointing a metal-covered arm at the dark silhouettes of Mystique and Pyro waiting next to a presumably stolen tour bus parked on a dirt road a few yards away from the bank of the river, which was partially frozen this time of year. A medium-sized black box was on the ground next to Mystique, though they weren’t able to determine what, if anything, the box held because it was so dark.

     “Man, about time!” Blob complained. “It feels like we’ve been running for hours, I need to sit down already!”

     As the two groups of Mutants met up on the banks of the river, Mystique nodded to the blue-haired girl, who nodded back. Blob plopped down on the ground with a thump while the rest of them stood around Mystique and Pyro.

     “Dangit, why do you guys get the coats?” Toad shuddered, motioning to the clothes Mystique and Pyro were wearing. “Geez, it’s freezin’! Why’d you guys have to plan this rescue in mid-December, anyway?”

     “Consider it an early Christmas present, you undeserving clod,” Mystique fired back.

     “If y’ want, I can warm y’ up, mate,” Pyro grinned, firing a short burst out of his flamethrower tubes for emphasis.

     “Pyro, keep the flames to yourself right now,” Mystique scolded, “I don’t want you sending signal flares up to anyone who might be searching for us.”

     “Right, sorry. Got carried away.”

     “What’s going on here, anyway?” Lance said, stepping forward.

     “Yeah, what’s he doing here!?” Pietro said, pointing at Pyro.

     “Why, I thought you’d be happy to see me, mate—after all, aren’t we on the same team anyways?”

     “No, I’m with—I mean, uh—“

     “I convinced Pyro to join us,” Mystique said. “After a while, he got tired of living in an empty base and finally left a few weeks before Magneto and I were freed from Apocalypse’s control. While I was tracking her down--”—here Mystique motioned toward the new female in the group—“—Pyro contacted me via his own efforts and asked to join. After ascertaining that he was being honest and not doing it just to spy on us for Magneto, I let him.”

     “Yeah, I tried th’ old coot. Liked his ideas, really did,” Pyro said, stretching, “But he was way too demandin’, mates. No one on his team had any sense of humor! You guys seem to be more fun.”

     “What about her, then?” Lance said, pointing to the other new recruit. He had been looking her over cautiously while Mystique had been talking—he guessed her to be about seventeen or eighteen, slightly older than Wanda. Her straight, chin-length hair was dyed bright electric blue, and she looked to be of Asian descent. She was also fairly tall, just an inch or two shorter than Jean Grey. She was wearing what was apparently her uniform, which was a light blue top that was short enough to expose her midriff, and fairly baggy blue jeans. In traditional Brotherhood style, she also had light gray shoulder pads. What really caught Lance’s interest, though, were the metal gauntlets she wore on the lower half of each arm. When he had first seen her break through the cell wall, they were crackling with energy, but now they seemed to be bereft of any charge.

     “That’s Noriko Ashida, who has taken the codename Surge,” Mystique answered.

     “Yeah, that’s real nice,” Toad interjected. “Hey, can we maybe continue this conversation inside that bus? Maybe with the heater cranked all th’ way up?”

     “I had heard… reports… of her shortly after leaving Egypt, and quickly made my way to Japan to seek her out,” Mystique continued, ignoring Toad. “Luckily for us, she has visited America several times before and is very fluent in English. Now, she’s a permanent resident of this country.”

     “So, why all the recruiting suddenly?” Pietro asked. “Aren’t we enough?”

     “You should know the answer to that question by now,” Mystique glared. “With Robert Kelly taking his place as the new mayor of Bayville in less than a month, I have no doubt he’ll overstep his bounds and go after us any way he can. We have to be ready, and we have to be prepared.”

     “Yeah, I’m sure we’ll become a formidable fighting force, capable of beating everyone and everything,” Pietro said, feigning a yawn. “Didn’t you say that the last time you showed up unexpectedly? How long did THAT last, two weeks?”

     Pietro yelped as Wanda hexed a small rock to hit him in the back of the head. Pyro burst out laughing.

     “We got distracted by other things then, which I’m sure you’re quite aware of, Pietro,” Mystique growled. “And thank you for reminding me that we need to take care of another problem… namely, YOU. I don’t take to traitors very well.”

     “Yeah, well… byethanksfortellingme!” Pietro said, waving before taking a step backwards and then zooming off down the bank of the river before any of the others could react.

     “Aw, man, I HATE it when he does that…” Blob said.

     “Surge, get him—I made sure to scavenge this before we left the parking lot,” Mystique smirked, picking up and handing over the black box, which was actually a car battery, to the blue-haired girl. “Just make sure not to kill him—I want Magneto to know that I’m back.”

     “Aw, you just took all the fun out of the chase,” Noriko grinned as she put one of her fingers into the battery’s coil, closing her eyes to concentrate. Suddenly, blue bolts of electricity leapt out of the battery and into her gauntlets, causing all of the others standing except Pyro and Mystique to step back in surprise.

     “Hey, what’s going on?!” Lance asked.

     A few seconds later, all of the spare energy from the battery had been absorbed into Surge’s gauntlets. Channeling it into her legs, she took off after Pietro—who was now almost over the horizon—at a far faster pace then even Pietro could run, a large trail of electrical energy following her as she sped across the landscape.

     “So, uh… bus? Heater? Please?” Toad pleaded.

     Pietro grinned. Yeah, okay, so he was out of the Brotherhood… again… but they were a bunch of losers anyway, and he had just gotten away scot-free for the second time. Just wait’ll Magneto learned that Pyro had joined Mystique’s team, his father would be out for blood…

     A bolt of electricity suddenly impacted the ground right in front of him. Pietro was barely able to avoid it even with his fast reflexes.

     “Hey! What the--?” Pietro asked, before turning his head around to see where the bolt had originated from.

     “WhatcanIsay? Iwasonthetrackteamintheninthgrade,” Surge said, grinning maliciously, her glowing blue eyes throwing out sparks of electricity. She was talking almost as fast as she was running, though apparently not on purpose.

     “How--?”

     Before Pietro could finish his sentence, Surge had already caught up to him. Taking a leap ahead, she put her foot out in front of him. Pietro, still not quite sure what was going on, wasn’t able to react in time and tripped over her foot at two hundred miles an hour. Crying out in pain as he tumbled head over heels, Pietro rolled down the rocky bank into the river below, hitting the icy cold water with a huge splash.

     Stopping to watch Pietro’s scraped and bleeding head burst above water, gasping for air, Noriko charged up her gauntlets, ready to let a big bolt sail into the river.

     “Oh, wait… she said not to kill him… right,” Noriko said to herself, frowning.

     “Go ahead and run home to your daddy!” she yelled at Pietro, who was staring at her in a mixture of disbelief and hated. “Be sure to tell him what a pathetic failure you’ve been… and not for the first time either, I hear!”

     With that said, she took off back down the bank in the direction she had come.

     The rest of the Brotherhood watched Surge speed back towards them. Despite the fact that the fight—such as it was—had taken place much further away than they could have seen, she had been gone for barely a minute. Although she was still running far faster than any normal human could have, she was moving noticeably slower than she had been when she first took off after Pietro. By the time she reached where the others were waiting, she only running about three times as fast as a normal person could run.

     “Wow, she can even outrun Pietro!” Toad exclaimed.

     “So long as I have a big enough charge,” Surge explained, panting. “I used up most of it just catching up to him.”

     “Mystique, what’s going on?” Wanda asked, confused. “Yes, Pietro was working with our father, but Magneto’s on our side, and… wait…”

     Mystique sighed. “Yes, that reminds me. I wish I could say I am surprised that those three bumbling idiots never told you, but sadly that’s not the case. If nothing else, Magneto certainly knew how you three would react to Mastermind’s mind wipe—by not telling her like the cowards you are.”

     “Oh boy, here it comes…” Blob mumbled.

     “Wanda,” Mystique said, her tone noticeably softer all of a sudden, “Don’t you remember? Magneto—the father that you supposedly love so much—kept you in a mental hospital since you were seven until just last year, when I got you out!”

     “W-what!?” Wanda gaped. “N-no, that’s not true! How could you say something like that!? He’s been everything I could ask for in a father!”

     Mystique noticed Wanda’s eyes shifting from person to person, however. Realizing that Wanda clearly wasn’t as sure of herself as she let on, Mystique decided to continue with the mental prodding.

     “Oh, really? You think I’m lying. Think, Wanda. Do you have any gaps in your memory from the last year? Anything that doesn’t quite fit together? Magneto had his lackey Mastermind wipe your mind so that you’d THINK he had been a good father so you’d leave him alone.”

     “No! How can you— Is she…?” Wanda left the question unfinished, looking at Lance, Fred, and Todd, wanting any kind of confirmation that her childhood memories were genuine. All three looked away sheepishly whenever she fixed her eyes on theirs.

     “So then it’s--- no, it can’t be—it’s not…” Wanda suddenly stopped stuttering and looked down for a few seconds.

     Suddenly, her head thrust back up, her eyes locked on Mystique’s. All the hatred, all the rage that had been gone from Wanda’s face for the last nine months had suddenly reappeared, stronger than ever.

     “I’LL KILL HIM!” Wanda shrieked, the already brown dormant blades of grass under her dying and disintegrating in fast-motion. “No, I won’t just kill him, I’ll make his death SLOW and PAINFUL—“

     “Hey, now, babycakes—“ Toad started, stepping forward.

     “SHUT UP ALREADY, YOU DISGUSTING INSECT!” Wanda roared, hexing a shrieking Toad into the freezing river. “YOU DIDN’T EVEN TELL ME!”

     “Save that rage and use it later,” Mystique said, her expression and tone back to normal. “Everyone, into the tour bus. We’ve got a lot to do.”

     Lance, Pyro, Noriko, and Fred followed Mystique wordlessly into the bus. Wanda cursed loudly and hexed a nearby tree into a twisted, blackened nightmarish shape, then managed to control her rage enough to stomp after the others. Only after she had stepped into the bus did Toad dare slosh out of the river, shivering frantically.

     “A—aw, m-man… n-now I ain’t j-just gonna g-get f-frostbite, I’m gonna g-get sick, t-too… If they th-think I spit up e-enough s-slime now, just w-wait…”

     “Well, this isn’t good…” Scott said, plopping the daily newspaper into the middle of the breakfast table, pointing to the main headline. It read, “ COUNTY JAIL MASSACRE, OVER 40 DEAD, INJURED—BROTHERHOOD OF BAYVILLE MEMBERS ESCAPED, OTHER MUTANTS LIKELY CULPRITS”

     “Oh, my gosh…” Kitty gasped, putting her hands over her mouth.

     Ray cursed under his breath.

     “So they’re back, zen?” Kurt asked, picking up the paper to read the details. “I didn’t think the Brotherhood could do something zis bad…”

     “Seriously, why do we even bother putting them in jail?” Rogue asked. “You just knew they were going to break out sooner or later. I say we just beat ‘em into a coma and be done with it.”

     “Well, I do have to admit, I thought Mystique had given up on the Brotherhood,” Professor Xavier said, sighing. “It’s been over a year since she was last with them, and given her extreme distaste for all of its members except Wanda, and now with the destruction of their home, I couldn’t see her picking up where she had left off after this long of a hiatus. I… should have been more cautious. After all this time, Mystique must have very elaborate plans indeed…”

     “You’re right,” Kurt said, his eyes fixed on the newspaper article. “She probably had help breaking out the other Brotherhood members from jail. According to zis, a large fire creature—“

     “Pyro,” Logan growled.

     “--and a Mutant with electrical attacks were responsible for nearly all of ze deaths,” Kurt finished.

     “E-electrical attacks?” Cessily gulped.

     “Why, what about it?” Kurt asked.

     “Mercury conducts electricity very well,” Hank explained.

     “Oh… right.”

     “That must be a new Mutant we’re as yet unaware of,” Xavier said. “I can only assume Mystique has been busy recruiting again. Everyone, be extra cautious outside the Mansion—Mystique is likely to have something serious planned indeed.”

To be continued…
 

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