Back to Gatefold#7 - "Children of a Lesser God - Part II"
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This story may contain scenes of graphic violence and sexual situations. It is recommended for mature readers.
IN Case You're Just Joining Us: Following the accidental shooting death of a young mutant in Tampa, Florida, Magneto has decided to take the Fallen Angels to the next level. Meanwhile, Rictor, Shatterstar, and Meltdown become involved in a massive brawl with the Acolytes. And something seems to be very, very wrong with Feral...
Beijing, China. 15 June. 0900L.
Xi'an Coy Manh hesitated as she reached for the thin door marking the entryway to her friend's apartment. She wondered for the tenth time that day whether this was wise, dropping in on Mei without so much as a phone call to prepare her.
Not that she thought her friend would be put out by her unexpected visit, but Mei… well, given their history it might be easy for her to misunderstand Xi'an's presence here.
But the truth was, she just wanted to see her friend. That was all.
(and smell her hair and touch her and kiss that strange scar high up on the inside of her thigh, the one that tickled her so)
Xi'an locked down that thought before it could go any further. Grimly determined now, and more than a little disgusted with her lack of self-control, she finished her previous motion and rapped on the door.
A shouted reply from inside, then the soft, padding approach of bare feet across a vinyl floor. Xi'an waited, somehow resisting the urge to run away.
The door slid back and there was Mei, just as Xi'an remembered her. Oh, maybe she'd put on a couple of pounds, grown out her hair a bit since they'd last spoken, but otherwise she was the same, and Xi'an felt a near-debilitating wave of nostalgia at the sight.
"Xi'an…"
<"Hello, Mei,"> Xi'an ventured. <"You look well.">
Mei leapt out the doorway and embraced Xi'an on the landing. It was the last thing she'd expected, and the two of them nearly went tumbling down the stairs at Xi'an's back together. She managed to regain her balance, and hugged her friend back, smelling her hair, forcing herself not to kiss the hollow of Mei's throat.
<"What are you doing here? No, never mind. Please… just come in.">
Xi'an did as she asked, slipping out of her shoes and leaving them in the small, sunken entryway before stepping up onto the heated floor. The apartment was large for a Beijing residence -- the last time Mei had written her, she'd said something about her new husband being an important man in the Chinese military… that apparently hadn't been an exaggeration.
<"Would you like something to drink?">
<"No thank you."> After so many years of speaking English, Xi'an's Chinese wasn't as good as it should have been, but so far the conversation had stayed well within the bounds of her abilities.
<"I'm so glad you're here,"> Mei said, kneeling on one of several mats arranged in the center of the room.
<"You are?">
<"Yes, of course. I--I need someone to talk to, Xi'an. I need…"> She stopped, her throat working silently. Mei had always been an emotional woman, and this bit of melodrama reminded Xi'an forcefully of how much she'd hated that about her. Still, she knelt across from her and touched her friend's hand.
<"What is it, Mei? Are you and your husband…?">
<"No, nothing like that,"> she sniffed, wiping at her eyes with the heel of one hand. <"I'm pregnant.">
Xi'an straightened, hopes and daydreams of reconciliation she'd never even known she'd harbored dying in the light of those two words. <"That's--that's wonderful.">
<"Is it?">
<"Well… why wouldn't it be?">
Mei looked away, one hand on her knee, the other pressed against her mouth, as if poised to catch the tears threatening to spill out of her eyes. <"I had… tests done when we first suspected… and we discovered the baby will probably be… a mutant.">
Xi'an blinked... then leaned forward, anger and hurt starting to rise below the surface of her concern. <"But I'm a mutant too, Mei. What's the problem?">
<"I know… I… the doctors all say the same thing, it's too dangerous. For the mother and the physician… and what if the baby is deformed, Xi'an?"> She swallowed, seemed to gather herself -- perhaps remembering that this wasn't a trial -- and finally looked her friend in the eye. <"My husband has decided… we're going to abort the child.">
<"Because it's a mutant.">
<"Yes.">
Xi'an was seething. She wanted more than anything to reach across the mats and backhand her friend -- the girl who had helped her discover her own sexuality and then left her for a man -- right across the face. She wanted to use her mutant powers to take control of Mei's body and bash her bigoted skull against the wall until she was unconscious. She wanted to…
Xi'an stopped, seeing the fear dawning in Mei's eyes. Mei had read everything she'd been thinking in her friend's glare. Everything.
<"You will kill this child because it's a mutant,"> Xi'an repeated, as if saying it enough times would make it untrue. Then, in English because she was unable to form the proper idea in Mei's language, "Prenatal genocide. How very… Chinese of you."
Xi'an rose and strode to the door, ignoring Mei's cries of explanation from behind her. Her head swam with anger and betrayal and she wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and stay there until this pain was nothing more than a dying ember buried deep in her heart.
The woman who had once been known as Karma of the New Mutants stormed out into the streets of Beijing, wishing she'd never come here in the first place.
London, England. 16 June. 1515L.
Osterley Park was fairly crowded on the Saturday afternoon Allison Crestmere found herself sitting on one of its benches, watching children feed ducks in the Garden Lake. The children's fat, lazy parents stood nearby, sweating and complaining of the heat.
It was true that summer had hit London with a bang rather than a whimper, but for Allison, who had grown up in the Amazon jungles of Brazil, the heat and humidity combined were nothing. She was, in fact, slightly chilled. The sun never came out in this bloody country…
What was she doing here? Not in England, but this park.
When she'd first received the typed message in the post -- AMARA, MEET ME NEAR GARDEN LAKE AT OSTERLEY AROUND THREE TOMORROW. SINCERELY, AN OLD FRIEND -- she'd been furious with whoever had sent it. One of her 'old friends' from her time at Xavier's school, no doubt. No one else would call her Amara. She'd set the note aflame the moment she'd finished it, watching it flare and wither to ash in her palm. She'd had every intention of ignoring the summons. If whoever-it-was wanted to reach her, they could come to the door like anyone else. They obviously had her address, after all.
But her curiosity had gotten the best of her. And so here she sat. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Dios mio, doesn't the sun ever come out in this country?"
"I was just wondering the same thing," she said, turning -- she'd recognized the voice before her eyes found the newcomer -- "Bobby."
Standing beside her bench was a dark-skinned young man her own age. His curly black hair was close-cropped and he wore a polo shirt and shorts. As Allison said his name, he stopped bouncing a soccer ball between his knees, shoved it under his arm, and grinned at her.
"You look good, Allison," Roberto Da Costa said. "I was afraid you might have gotten fat and ugly."
"Little chance of that," she sighed, scooting over and patting the bench in an absent, not-at-all friendly way. "And what's with calling me 'Allison'? Your note was addressed to 'Amara'."
"It's not your real name, is it?" It was a rhetorical question, so Roberto pressed on without giving her time to reply. "I did that to get your attention and to give you some idea of who I might be."
"Honestly, I thought it was from Guthrie."
"Sam? No, he's too busy leading the X-Men these days."
"So I hear."
Roberto finally took the seat next to her and bent over to tie one of his sneakers.
"So what is this about, Bobby? The last I'd heard you'd run off to join Magneto… is that true?"
He gave her a look over the top of his sunglasses. "What do you think?"
"I think if you did, I admire your brass. From Xavier to Magneto. That's quite a more dramatic switch than Pepsi to Coke, right?"
"Right."
"And you still haven't answered my question."
His shoe tied, Roberto stood suddenly and offered the blond woman his hand. "Walk with me."
Allison was a bit perturbed by being put off -- God knew she wouldn't have put up with it from any of her other former 'friends' -- but she had always felt closer to Roberto than the other New Mutants, probably because both of them were born to aristocracy. She rose without taking his hand and allowed him to lead her along the edge of the lake.
"I won't mince words, Allison. I did join Magneto. I and some other former X-Forcers are living in Genosha now, part of a team called the Fallen Angels."
"Like that street gang you ran with for a time?"
Roberto laughed. "Not at all like them… though you're right, the name is the same."
"I know where this is going, Bobby, and the answer is no."
Roberto stopped in his tracks. Allison stopped too and turned to face him, her jaw set, ready for a fight.
"You want me to join your new club, right? You want me to be Magma again. Be a superhero… only this time, we won't be goody two-shoes baby X-Men, we'll be edgy, dangerous, post-modern superheroes, working for the MUTANT MASTER of MAGNETISM." She blew a dismissive puff of air out and flipped a hand at him. "Grow up, Bobby."
Roberto blinked, smiled, then laughed. "Can't pull one over on you, can I, Amara?"
"Allison."
"Whatever. Look… if all I was doing was putting together a team of young heroes, I wouldn't be bothering you. I'd know up-front that you'd laugh in my face. But I no longer have any interest in rushing to help a bunch of stupid bigots who are just going to throw bottles and garbage at me after I save them from rampaging Sentinels. What I do care about is getting some of homo superior's own back."
"What? No noble cause, Roberto? No crusade?"
"None… unless you count payback."
"You sound just like Magneto."
"You were at Xavier's School with the rest of us when he was the headmaster, so you tell me, Amara… is that such a bad thing?"
"I don't know… why don't you ask all the people who died when his EM pulse killed all the electric power on the planet. Or the sailors on that battleship he sunk. Or any of the other thousands of dead he's responsible for."
Bobby sighed and looked back in the direction they'd come. The fat parents of the playing children had claimed the bench they'd vacated. "This self-righteousness. It's not like you."
"And this Evil Mutant rhetoric bullshit isn't like you, Roberto, so I guess I'm not the only one who's changed. Is that all?"
Bobby nodded. "Yes. That's it."
"Thank you for wasting an otherwise marvelous afternoon, Bobby. Please forget you have my address." She whirled around with a sweep of curly golden locks and strode away across the grass. Bobby watched her go. Even with the anger and embarrassment of the tongue-lashing she'd just given him, it was hard not to admire those long legs pumping beneath the cuffs of her white shorts. And Magma had always had the nicest ass in the New Mutants… things obviously hadn't changed on that score…
"Pull your brain out of the Calvin Kleins, Don Juan," a woman's voice said at his side. Amelia Voght -- Acolyte and the closest thing Magneto had to a confidante -- had appeared next to him, munching on the contents of a small bag of popcorn she'd picked up somewhere. "I take it the interview didn't go well?"
"She's in," Bobby said immediately. "Trust me, she's in. She just doesn't know it yet."
Voght shrugged. "Whatever. You ready to go?"
"Yes. Take me back to Genosha so I can change… and then our next stop will be Madripoor."
"Your wish…" Voght tossed the popcorn to the ducks clustered at the lakes edge and crumpled up the bag. Then she and Roberto both vanished in a flash of teleportational light.
New York City, New York. 15 June. 1130L.
"Y'ello!" Tabitha Smith cried, standing in the rectangle of light pouring in through the bay door she'd left open behind her. Silence and darkness were the only responses she got. She put one hand on her hip, bare above her low-hanging jeans, and sighed.
Stupid to think they would still be here, she had told Magneto (well, maybe she hadn't used the word 'stupid'... wouldn't be wise around somebody as bipolar as Maggie... heh, 'bipolar', that was funny). But noooo, send Tabs on a wild goose chase to a warehouse in the seediest corner of Manhattan while Bobby gets to go pick up recruits in scenic London.
Bobby. Now there was another pain in her ass.
She considered blowing the dump up just for old times sake (the old times weren't that great, after all), then thought better of it. No need to draw the attention of the cops. She turned to go.
She heard an insectile skittering across the concrete floor that froze her in her tracks. She spun, creating a plasma bomb in her fist as she did so, but she was too late.
Something small and sharp clamped down on her ankle, lifted her bodily, and slung her a dozen yards across the darkened warehouse floor. She tried to roll in the air, get her feet under her, but before she could, she collided with an old couch. She sensed, rather than saw, the cloud of dust explode from the furniture as she struck it. That skittering sound came again, charging straight at her from the rectangle of light in the doorway. "Fuckfuckfuck," she snarled, and summoned a glowing ball of explosive plasma into being in her open hand.
"Stop right there, Bill! Stop it or I'll blow your crustacean ass to tuna! I just want to talk!"
The skittering stopped. Standing on the cracked cement floor at the foot of the couch, barely visible in the glow cast by the plasma bomb, was a large, blue lobster. It glared up at her silently with eerily expressive eyes.
"Where's Gomi, you blue bastard?" Tabby started to get up, hissed in pain when she put weight on the ankle Bill had thrown her with, then finished putting weight on it anyway. "Where's Chance? Ariel? What about the Vanisher?"
"Boom Boom?" a woman's high-pitched, musical voice chimed uncertainly in the darkness. "Chance, look! I think that's Boom Boom!"
"No 'Boom Boom', please." Tabby let the time bomb dissolve in her hand. "I outgrew that about five minutes after I left here."
"So what brings you back, big-time superhero?" another voice asked. This one was female too, but it was tougher. Young, but already roughened by cigarette smoke. The two speakers stepped out of the darkness. The one with the musical voice was tall and reed-like, with wild purple hair and big, obnoxious sunglasses. The rough-and-tumble was shorter, boyish in appearance.
IN Case You're Just Joining Us: Following the accidental shooting death of a young mutant in Tampa, Florida, Magneto has decided to take the Fallen Angels to the next level. Meanwhile, Rictor, Shatterstar, and Meltdown become involved in a massive brawl with the Acolytes. And something seems to be very, very wrong with Feral...
Beijing, China. 15 June. 0900L.
Xi'an Coy Manh hesitated as she reached for the thin door marking the entryway to her friend's apartment. She wondered for the tenth time that day whether this was wise, dropping in on Mei without so much as a phone call to prepare her.
Not that she thought her friend would be put out by her unexpected visit, but Mei… well, given their history it might be easy for her to misunderstand Xi'an's presence here.
But the truth was, she just wanted to see her friend. That was all.
(and smell her hair and touch her and kiss that strange scar high up on the inside of her thigh, the one that tickled her so)
Xi'an locked down that thought before it could go any further. Grimly determined now, and more than a little disgusted with her lack of self-control, she finished her previous motion and rapped on the door.
A shouted reply from inside, then the soft, padding approach of bare feet across a vinyl floor. Xi'an waited, somehow resisting the urge to run away.
The door slid back and there was Mei, just as Xi'an remembered her. Oh, maybe she'd put on a couple of pounds, grown out her hair a bit since they'd last spoken, but otherwise she was the same, and Xi'an felt a near-debilitating wave of nostalgia at the sight.
"Xi'an…"
<"Hello, Mei,"> Xi'an ventured. <"You look well.">
Mei leapt out the doorway and embraced Xi'an on the landing. It was the last thing she'd expected, and the two of them nearly went tumbling down the stairs at Xi'an's back together. She managed to regain her balance, and hugged her friend back, smelling her hair, forcing herself not to kiss the hollow of Mei's throat.
<"What are you doing here? No, never mind. Please… just come in.">
Xi'an did as she asked, slipping out of her shoes and leaving them in the small, sunken entryway before stepping up onto the heated floor. The apartment was large for a Beijing residence -- the last time Mei had written her, she'd said something about her new husband being an important man in the Chinese military… that apparently hadn't been an exaggeration.
<"Would you like something to drink?">
<"No thank you."> After so many years of speaking English, Xi'an's Chinese wasn't as good as it should have been, but so far the conversation had stayed well within the bounds of her abilities.
<"I'm so glad you're here,"> Mei said, kneeling on one of several mats arranged in the center of the room.
<"You are?">
<"Yes, of course. I--I need someone to talk to, Xi'an. I need…"> She stopped, her throat working silently. Mei had always been an emotional woman, and this bit of melodrama reminded Xi'an forcefully of how much she'd hated that about her. Still, she knelt across from her and touched her friend's hand.
<"What is it, Mei? Are you and your husband…?">
<"No, nothing like that,"> she sniffed, wiping at her eyes with the heel of one hand. <"I'm pregnant.">
Xi'an straightened, hopes and daydreams of reconciliation she'd never even known she'd harbored dying in the light of those two words. <"That's--that's wonderful.">
<"Is it?">
<"Well… why wouldn't it be?">
Mei looked away, one hand on her knee, the other pressed against her mouth, as if poised to catch the tears threatening to spill out of her eyes. <"I had… tests done when we first suspected… and we discovered the baby will probably be… a mutant.">
Xi'an blinked... then leaned forward, anger and hurt starting to rise below the surface of her concern. <"But I'm a mutant too, Mei. What's the problem?">
<"I know… I… the doctors all say the same thing, it's too dangerous. For the mother and the physician… and what if the baby is deformed, Xi'an?"> She swallowed, seemed to gather herself -- perhaps remembering that this wasn't a trial -- and finally looked her friend in the eye. <"My husband has decided… we're going to abort the child.">
<"Because it's a mutant.">
<"Yes.">
Xi'an was seething. She wanted more than anything to reach across the mats and backhand her friend -- the girl who had helped her discover her own sexuality and then left her for a man -- right across the face. She wanted to use her mutant powers to take control of Mei's body and bash her bigoted skull against the wall until she was unconscious. She wanted to…
Xi'an stopped, seeing the fear dawning in Mei's eyes. Mei had read everything she'd been thinking in her friend's glare. Everything.
<"You will kill this child because it's a mutant,"> Xi'an repeated, as if saying it enough times would make it untrue. Then, in English because she was unable to form the proper idea in Mei's language, "Prenatal genocide. How very… Chinese of you."
Xi'an rose and strode to the door, ignoring Mei's cries of explanation from behind her. Her head swam with anger and betrayal and she wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and stay there until this pain was nothing more than a dying ember buried deep in her heart.
The woman who had once been known as Karma of the New Mutants stormed out into the streets of Beijing, wishing she'd never come here in the first place.
London, England. 16 June. 1515L.
Osterley Park was fairly crowded on the Saturday afternoon Allison Crestmere found herself sitting on one of its benches, watching children feed ducks in the Garden Lake. The children's fat, lazy parents stood nearby, sweating and complaining of the heat.
It was true that summer had hit London with a bang rather than a whimper, but for Allison, who had grown up in the Amazon jungles of Brazil, the heat and humidity combined were nothing. She was, in fact, slightly chilled. The sun never came out in this bloody country…
What was she doing here? Not in England, but this park.
When she'd first received the typed message in the post -- AMARA, MEET ME NEAR GARDEN LAKE AT OSTERLEY AROUND THREE TOMORROW. SINCERELY, AN OLD FRIEND -- she'd been furious with whoever had sent it. One of her 'old friends' from her time at Xavier's school, no doubt. No one else would call her Amara. She'd set the note aflame the moment she'd finished it, watching it flare and wither to ash in her palm. She'd had every intention of ignoring the summons. If whoever-it-was wanted to reach her, they could come to the door like anyone else. They obviously had her address, after all.
But her curiosity had gotten the best of her. And so here she sat. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Dios mio, doesn't the sun ever come out in this country?"
"I was just wondering the same thing," she said, turning -- she'd recognized the voice before her eyes found the newcomer -- "Bobby."
Standing beside her bench was a dark-skinned young man her own age. His curly black hair was close-cropped and he wore a polo shirt and shorts. As Allison said his name, he stopped bouncing a soccer ball between his knees, shoved it under his arm, and grinned at her.
"You look good, Allison," Roberto Da Costa said. "I was afraid you might have gotten fat and ugly."
"Little chance of that," she sighed, scooting over and patting the bench in an absent, not-at-all friendly way. "And what's with calling me 'Allison'? Your note was addressed to 'Amara'."
"It's not your real name, is it?" It was a rhetorical question, so Roberto pressed on without giving her time to reply. "I did that to get your attention and to give you some idea of who I might be."
"Honestly, I thought it was from Guthrie."
"Sam? No, he's too busy leading the X-Men these days."
"So I hear."
Roberto finally took the seat next to her and bent over to tie one of his sneakers.
"So what is this about, Bobby? The last I'd heard you'd run off to join Magneto… is that true?"
He gave her a look over the top of his sunglasses. "What do you think?"
"I think if you did, I admire your brass. From Xavier to Magneto. That's quite a more dramatic switch than Pepsi to Coke, right?"
"Right."
"And you still haven't answered my question."
His shoe tied, Roberto stood suddenly and offered the blond woman his hand. "Walk with me."
Allison was a bit perturbed by being put off -- God knew she wouldn't have put up with it from any of her other former 'friends' -- but she had always felt closer to Roberto than the other New Mutants, probably because both of them were born to aristocracy. She rose without taking his hand and allowed him to lead her along the edge of the lake.
"I won't mince words, Allison. I did join Magneto. I and some other former X-Forcers are living in Genosha now, part of a team called the Fallen Angels."
"Like that street gang you ran with for a time?"
Roberto laughed. "Not at all like them… though you're right, the name is the same."
"I know where this is going, Bobby, and the answer is no."
Roberto stopped in his tracks. Allison stopped too and turned to face him, her jaw set, ready for a fight.
"You want me to join your new club, right? You want me to be Magma again. Be a superhero… only this time, we won't be goody two-shoes baby X-Men, we'll be edgy, dangerous, post-modern superheroes, working for the MUTANT MASTER of MAGNETISM." She blew a dismissive puff of air out and flipped a hand at him. "Grow up, Bobby."
Roberto blinked, smiled, then laughed. "Can't pull one over on you, can I, Amara?"
"Allison."
"Whatever. Look… if all I was doing was putting together a team of young heroes, I wouldn't be bothering you. I'd know up-front that you'd laugh in my face. But I no longer have any interest in rushing to help a bunch of stupid bigots who are just going to throw bottles and garbage at me after I save them from rampaging Sentinels. What I do care about is getting some of homo superior's own back."
"What? No noble cause, Roberto? No crusade?"
"None… unless you count payback."
"You sound just like Magneto."
"You were at Xavier's School with the rest of us when he was the headmaster, so you tell me, Amara… is that such a bad thing?"
"I don't know… why don't you ask all the people who died when his EM pulse killed all the electric power on the planet. Or the sailors on that battleship he sunk. Or any of the other thousands of dead he's responsible for."
Bobby sighed and looked back in the direction they'd come. The fat parents of the playing children had claimed the bench they'd vacated. "This self-righteousness. It's not like you."
"And this Evil Mutant rhetoric bullshit isn't like you, Roberto, so I guess I'm not the only one who's changed. Is that all?"
Bobby nodded. "Yes. That's it."
"Thank you for wasting an otherwise marvelous afternoon, Bobby. Please forget you have my address." She whirled around with a sweep of curly golden locks and strode away across the grass. Bobby watched her go. Even with the anger and embarrassment of the tongue-lashing she'd just given him, it was hard not to admire those long legs pumping beneath the cuffs of her white shorts. And Magma had always had the nicest ass in the New Mutants… things obviously hadn't changed on that score…
"Pull your brain out of the Calvin Kleins, Don Juan," a woman's voice said at his side. Amelia Voght -- Acolyte and the closest thing Magneto had to a confidante -- had appeared next to him, munching on the contents of a small bag of popcorn she'd picked up somewhere. "I take it the interview didn't go well?"
"She's in," Bobby said immediately. "Trust me, she's in. She just doesn't know it yet."
Voght shrugged. "Whatever. You ready to go?"
"Yes. Take me back to Genosha so I can change… and then our next stop will be Madripoor."
"Your wish…" Voght tossed the popcorn to the ducks clustered at the lakes edge and crumpled up the bag. Then she and Roberto both vanished in a flash of teleportational light.
New York City, New York. 15 June. 1130L.
"Y'ello!" Tabitha Smith cried, standing in the rectangle of light pouring in through the bay door she'd left open behind her. Silence and darkness were the only responses she got. She put one hand on her hip, bare above her low-hanging jeans, and sighed.
Stupid to think they would still be here, she had told Magneto (well, maybe she hadn't used the word 'stupid'... wouldn't be wise around somebody as bipolar as Maggie... heh, 'bipolar', that was funny). But noooo, send Tabs on a wild goose chase to a warehouse in the seediest corner of Manhattan while Bobby gets to go pick up recruits in scenic London.
Bobby. Now there was another pain in her ass.
She considered blowing the dump up just for old times sake (the old times weren't that great, after all), then thought better of it. No need to draw the attention of the cops. She turned to go.
She heard an insectile skittering across the concrete floor that froze her in her tracks. She spun, creating a plasma bomb in her fist as she did so, but she was too late.
Something small and sharp clamped down on her ankle, lifted her bodily, and slung her a dozen yards across the darkened warehouse floor. She tried to roll in the air, get her feet under her, but before she could, she collided with an old couch. She sensed, rather than saw, the cloud of dust explode from the furniture as she struck it. That skittering sound came again, charging straight at her from the rectangle of light in the doorway. "Fuckfuckfuck," she snarled, and summoned a glowing ball of explosive plasma into being in her open hand.
"Stop right there, Bill! Stop it or I'll blow your crustacean ass to tuna! I just want to talk!"
The skittering stopped. Standing on the cracked cement floor at the foot of the couch, barely visible in the glow cast by the plasma bomb, was a large, blue lobster. It glared up at her silently with eerily expressive eyes.
"Where's Gomi, you blue bastard?" Tabby started to get up, hissed in pain when she put weight on the ankle Bill had thrown her with, then finished putting weight on it anyway. "Where's Chance? Ariel? What about the Vanisher?"
"Boom Boom?" a woman's high-pitched, musical voice chimed uncertainly in the darkness. "Chance, look! I think that's Boom Boom!"
"No 'Boom Boom', please." Tabby let the time bomb dissolve in her hand. "I outgrew that about five minutes after I left here."
"So what brings you back, big-time superhero?" another voice asked. This one was female too, but it was tougher. Young, but already roughened by cigarette smoke. The two speakers stepped out of the darkness. The one with the musical voice was tall and reed-like, with wild purple hair and big, obnoxious sunglasses. The rough-and-tumble was shorter, boyish in appearance.