A/N: Here's the new Chapter! Which also means the four chapters are up on my Patreon for early access as well as the bsp;to vote on the dire of the story!

  The girls e to a decision.

  -x-X-x-

  Laura huffs, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “They are weakened and exhausted. There’s no need for subterfuge. If we strike swiftly with overwhelming force, they will not even have time to mount a proper response.”

  Gwen shakes her head at that, the eyes of her mask squinting in a way that gives the impression of a frown.

  “That’s no reason to go in guns bzing though. If we mount a distra and have one or two of us get their attention at the front, it’ll allow the rest of us to slip in all the more easily from anle, at which point the sed group will have free reign of the pce.”

  Finally, Kitty interjects.

  “Okay but stay with me here… why even bother with the distra in the first pce? Like Laura said, they’re tired, they’re exhausted. Perfect time for ALL of us to sneak in ued as one, cohesive unit. Our true target is their bht? We’re aiming t Harkins down and take him into custody, yeah? So really, there’s no reason to evehem sound the arm.”

  There’s a pause as all three of them digest one another’s pns. Then, they tinue debating amongst themselves. Thaddeus… stays out of it. He reizes that he has signifit sway over all three women, and he alsnizes his incredible inexperience when it es to things like this.

  It’s not his pce to step in and dictate what they should be doing wherio in front of him were all far more experienced. He would be better served watg them and learning from their as, over putting his nose in things and making a mess of it all in the process.

  But most importantly of all… he just didn’t want to be responsible for ing up with the pn, especially when that pn would carry signifit risk to all of their lives. Oh, he certainly didn’t mind risking his own life, especially for any of these women, but he preferred not to be the oelling them how he expected them to risk their lives.

  As he stands bad lets the three women talk it out, a voice echoes in his ear, quiet as a whisper.

  “Not going to interject, Thaddeus? Not going to y down the w?”

  It takes Thaddeus a sed to realize that no, Cessily hasn’t developed psychic abilities. Rather, she’s speaking directly into his ear instead of from elsewhere on his body, the all-mercury mutant that’s currently turned herself into a suit of armor for him basically unig with him and him alht now. Since his head is covered by a helmet made of her, Thaddeus lowers his own void whispers back, fident he won’t be heard even with Gwen and Laura’s enhanced senses.

  “… Not my pce, Cessily. They know better than me, so I’ll let them figure it out.”

  “Mmm…”

  Now, up to this point Thaddeus HAS been listening to Laura, Gwen, and Kitty discuss tactid the pros and s of each of their respective pns. He’s been watg and learning. However, that bees a mite more difficult when Cessily suddenly begins to grope him down below, ing a part of herself around his cod stroking it up and down in a way that has him stiffening in response.

  “Cessily… what are you doing?”

  “Bored~”

  Man, for all his smarts, for all his increased intellect… sometimes he was still the braindead jock he’d once been, wasn’t he? It hadn’t even occurred to Thaddeus that Cessily could or would do something like this when she’d first decided to ‘embrace’ him and turn herself into an armored suit for his use. He probably should have seen this ing a mile away, but he just hadn’t.

  Still keeping his voice down, he heless tries tue with Cessily.

  “This really isn’t the time…”

  “Meh, if we’re not going to participate in the pnning, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have our own fun. Besides, you don’t know Laura and Kitty like I do. We might be here for a while…”

  Just as she’s saying that however…

  “Thunder?”

  Blinking as he realizes that’s supposed to be HIS ame, Thaddeus is pulled from Cessily’s VERY distrag ‘embrace’ and finds all three of the other women are looking at him curiously. As though they’re waiting for him to respond.

  “Sorry… I got lost in my own thoughts for a sed there.”

  Cessily’s airy quiet giggle resounds in his ear at that, even as the others exge gnces before ultimately shrugging. In the end, Kitty is the one who speaks.

  “Well, we’ve decided to go with my pn. We’re all going to infiltrate as one unit, and float uhe radar while doing so.”

  Thaddeus stares in surprise for a moment. Truth be told, he’d been expeg the three women, all with strong personalities, to take loo e to a sensus as well. In the face of his surprise, Gwen huffs and shakes her head.

  “Look, if I had known about Shadowcat’s powerset ahead of time, I would have gone along with infiltration from the start. I didn’t know she could vey her power to others through touch.”

  Laura, meanwhile, just scowls a bit and looks away. Obviously she HAD known, but still wao go with her all out assault pn. That… yeah, that all tracks. Slowly, Thaddeus nods.

  “Right. And… I’m not sure if they’ve set another psychic dampener up yet, but they might not have. If they haven’t, then I could reach out into the minds of any guards in our path and make it seem like they’re not seeing anything as we sneak in.”

  Kitty beams at his tribution, while Gwen nods and Laura just settles into a sulk. Cessily, meanwhile, lets out a disappointed sigh into his ear as she finally ceases the molestation he’d been ign while they all talked.

  “Ah well… aime.”

  Thaddeus doesn’t blush often, all things sidered. But in that moment… he’s grateful for the all-ceali Cessily has him wearing, because his face definitely feels hotter than normal.

  Regardless, with their phe five of them finally leave the treelier a few seds of Gwen and Laura cheg the sight lines of the exhausted guards with their own enhanced sight. Ohey’ve found an opening, they all move as one unit, quickly approag the walls of the abandoned pound.

  They make it through the first barrier with ease thanks to Kitty’s mutation. Her ability to share her intangibility with everyooug her means that there’s no difficulty to be had in slipping all of them right on through. After that, Thaddeus reaches out and quickly ascertains that the psychic dampeners i the st boratory are not in use here. Either they haven’t had the time to set anything like that up yet, or they simply don’t have the resources to repce the ohat would have beeroyed i facility’s self-destruct.

  Regardless of which it was, the e is the same. Ohey’re within the pound’s perimeter, reag out and making sure any guards who might look their way see nothing at all is child’s py for Thaddeus. This allows them to slip through the walls of one of the side buildings where Cessily feels the i parts of her.

  They wind up in a dark ste room, and under Cessily’s dire, quickly find the secure case where the remaining samples of her mercury are bei. Breaking open the case is child’s py for Laura’s Adamantine Cws, at which point Thaddeus simply reaches out as Cessily crawl from his arm to the case, reassimiting those lost pieces of her.

  “Mm… good. I feel… almost whole again.”

  That’s said out loud for everyone’s be, drawing a smile from Kitty and a nwen. Thaddeus, meanwhile…

  “What about the rest of you, Mercury? you feel where the parts that you said are moving could be located?”

  Cessily hesitates for a moment, long enough for Laura to interject.

  “We should take care of Harkins first. Hunt him down, take him out. We ’t risk him getting away again.”

  Thaddeus frowns at that. On the one hand, Laura isly wrong. Oher hand, it almost sounded like she cared more about taking down the leader of The Facility than she did about helping her friend and teammate. He wasn’t sure he liked that very much, but before he take her to task, Cessily speaks up.

  “Talon is right. If the psychic dampeners aren’t ihat means you locate Harkins, right Thaddeus? Take us to him. Regaining all of my missing pieces is meaningless if he escapes again, only to threaten us more down the line.”

  Ah, well that settled that. Apparently, Cessily was just as eager for revenge as Laura was. Fair enough. It takes Thaddeus a sed of fog on the minds spread throughout the pound, but eventually he’s pretty sure he finds the man iion. Adam Harkins has a particurly twisted sort of mind, even among the sort of people that his anization has recruited to staff this facility. Indeed, even just skimming his surface thoughts leaves Thaddeus feeling dirty and un. Not to mention, what he picks up from them…

  “He’s… that way. And I think he’s w on a on. Something that uses the pieces from Mercury, if what I’m getting is correct.”

  “Thunder is right. Because the piee that are moving of their own volition… are also in that dire.”

  In the end, it seemed they were beio kill two birds with oone. Exging gnces between themselves, they all nod after a moment before moving on with Thaddeus leading the way. Slipping through the pound ued tio be a breeze given the bination of their abilities. They make an excellent team when it es to infiltration, even if they haven’t really beeed in any truly meaningful way yet.

  Indeed, it doesn’t take long at all before they arrive i another boratory, where Harkins is bent over a monitor, tapping away at a keyboard and mumbling under his breath. The far side of the b is dominated by a massive holding cell, with a huge vault door to keep whatever is inside of it tained. No doubt that’s where the moving pieercury be found. What had the bastard done? What had he created?

  “Harkins.”

  Laura snarls as she reveals their presence by stepping forward. Her cws are out and she looks ready to kill. It’s probably only their presehat kept her from opening with a deadly atta the head of The Facility.

  Whipping around, they’re all treated to the somewhat gratifying sight of Adam Harkins’ eyes widening in shod horror behind his gsses. The stist is quick to school his expression, but it’s obvious he wasn’t expeg them… not eveely. Still, a grin spreads across his face after a moment. A wild grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

  “You just don’t know when to give up, X-23! And would you look at that, you even brought friends this time!”

  It’s an act, Thaddeus realizes after a moment. The crazed grin is meant to disarm, to make them think he’s off his rocker. But his mind… his mind is as cool, calm, and collected as ever. It’s rag a mile a minute as he looks for a way out… but doesn’t find it.

  “It’s over, Harkins. There’s no escape. Surrender.”

  As Harkins internally agrees with Laura’s words that it’s over and there’s no escape, he heless refuses to surrender. Instead…

  “Oh, you’re quite right my dear X-23… there is no escape… for YOU-urk!”

  As the stist whips around to try and sm his hand down on a particur button on his keyboard, Thaddeus reaches out… and stops him. He freezes Harkins ih his psychic powers, effectively stopping all traffi the man’s brain to his body. He ove, he ot enact his final pn… which Thaddeus tell ening up the holding cell and unleashing the creature inside on them.

  Before Laura take matters into her own hands ahe problem more definitively, Thaddeus knocks Harkins unscious, causing the stist to slump to the floor bonelessly, hitting his head on the way down. He’s not dead, but he’ll have a nasty bump when he wakes up. IF he wakes up.

  For a long moment, Laura looks down at him with anger in her eyes. At the same time, Kitty rushes over to the sole that Harkins was w at, looking over whatever he was doing. Finally, the mutant woman curses under her breath.

  “Shit… this is bad. This is really bad.”

  “What is it, Shadowcat?”

  “They… they made something. They call it Predator X. It’s specifically desigo hunt down mutants and kill them. Not just kill them… it es them and in doing so gains their powers. Like a biological Sentinel. It’s capable of reprodug asexually as well… we o destroy this thing, asap.”

  That did sound bad. Gwen clears her throat, before moving to Kitty’s side.

  “Is there a failsafe maybe? A way of killing it in its holding cell.”

  “There is, yes. But…”

  Cessily speaks up, finishing Kitty’s sentence for her.

  “But it’ll be total, won’t it? I’ll lose the pieces that were incorporated into it forever.”

  Kitty winces and nods.

  “… Yeah.”

  Gwen looks between him and Kitty for a moment.

  “I mean… how we even be sure you could reincorporate those pieces bato yourself now that they’re in another living being? Is it really work the risk?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cessily’s frank admission leaves them all quiet for a moment. Finally, Kitty speaks up.

  “If we were going to try to get the st parts of Cessily back, I wouldn’t suggest we try to tackle this thing on our own. We’d need backup… we’d have to call in the rest of the X-Men or something.”

  There’s some shuffling at that idea. Meanwhile, Thaddeus clears his throat.

  “Could, uh… also call on the Avengers… or the Fantastic Four? I knoair of gals.”

  Though maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Or maybe JUST calling She-Hulk and Invisible Woman was the better idea, sihey had a soft spot for him and might be willing to keep their mouths shut.

  Everyone looks at one another, nobody willing to address the elephant in the room. The easiest, simplest solution was to just use the failsafe aroy this ‘Predator X’ right here and right now. But it would e at the cost of Cessily’s st remaining pieces. Still, she didn’t seem like she was too beat up about the possibility. Or if she was, she was hiding her own feelings on the subject carefully.

  Fighting this thing by themselves though seemed like a bad idea. But then, calling in backup ALSO seemed like a bad idea. It was funny… they’d done everything right. They’d performed perfectly. So why did it feel like they were losing here? Why did it feel like they were faces with nothing but bad decisions?

  -x-X-x- The Vote: [ ] Use the failsafe, destroy Predator X without risking anyone's lives - 27%[ ] Release Predator X so they take it down as a team - 4%[ ] Call in MORE back up, call in the X-Men - 6%[X] Call in MORE back up, call in She-Hulk and Sue Storm - 62%

  -x-X-x- If you'd like to read more of my work not seen on this website, check out Hentai-Foundry. and QuestionableQuesting. where I have over a thousand stories!

  If you'd like to tribute to funding my writing at all, check me out on Patreon./Cambrian

  Thanks for reading!