[Plot] Hello, We Must Be Going

[Narrator]

"Pfffft! Great!" 3B announced, throwing up his hands.

10C spoke up to Robin in a tone on contrition. "He doesn't mean to be flippant... But Rabbit is the same point of entry we all used. So you see, that's not a valid option to get out being that we can't find her.

We haven't been able to locate any member of Court since the alarms went off."

[Robin Stanton]

"Rabbit? Ooh, I see. Down the rabbit-hole. Clever. But there's gotta be other ways out of here. Air and water needs to come in at least. And I dunno if Rabbit is one of the people in charge of this place but if not then they might have a way out that doesn't rely on the whims of someone's power. I think we're underground but that's just kind of the vibe I'm getting. Would track with the whole wonderland thing though..."

"Does the Court normally hang out in the same space as you guys? How much access to this place do you guys have? Maybe they're just all in some control room, discussing what to do with me?"

[Narrator]

"Honestly? We've never much had the chance to look around. If we got anywhere they didn't want us, Queenie would steer us away, or Tweedles would come and collect us.

Rabbit is a member of The Court, and The Court is.... not in charge, but... preferred patients?"

"Lackies." 3B clarifies. " We're told they are let out of the complex, but it's likely Rabbit let's them out too.

They have their own private quarters here in the complex. Some times, members of GenPop will be allowed in their quarters, but only when summoned.

And we only have the access Tweedles have currently, due to their key card access."

[Robin Stanton]

"Sufficiently loyal or conditioned people, I bet. But that means there's a chance they don't trust Rabbit a hundred percent and got a regular way out somewhere. Alright, let's take stock of what we got to work with! I know you two do tele and cryokinesis already. Sorry about socking you one, by the way." she laughs awkwardly. "I'll let you have a free shot when we get out of here."

[Narrator]

3B shrugged at the hit comment.

"That's the second problem." 3B held out his hand to a cup of water sitting on a nearby cafeteria table. Straining himself to the point of sweat, there wasn't any change in the item, nor any ice generated from his person. When his fingers were bent backward to the point they looked like the might sprain, he stopped.

"Try as we might, we don't have access to these things. Whatever they do to keep us under wraps, they only turned it off temporarily to deal with you."

[Robin Stanton]

"Well shit. Could be the ear-tags. Or a power suppressor a floor above or below. No wait, must be the tags or my shifting wouldn't work. Still, we can do this. Is there a door somewhere the Tweedle-Card doesn't open?"

[Narrator]

"Not that we've found." 3B put a lot of stress on that 'we' word.

[Robin Stanton]

"Sounds like we need to go poking around then! Who's got the card?"

[Narrator]

10C held it up. " There's another problem.

We're the first dinner shift. There's double more of us where we came from. How we knew something was more wrong than initially thought was when they didn't immediately shift us out of here so they could eat.

And as you can guess, there's no card reader on the other end of the cafeteria."

[Robin Stanton]

"Good grief, how many unwilling operatives could they possible need? Okay, so right now you can't even get back to where they are? Let's go see if some good old fashioned elbow-grease can't open that door. The three strongest, with me. I'll be the crowbar, you be the muscle."

[Narrator]

The group sort of murmured between then who was the elected three. As they figured it out, 10B asked -

"What do you mean by unwilling operatives?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Well when I first busted in here you guys were acting kind of mind controlled. You got eartags that may or may not control access to your powers. You got a mess hall to eat in shifts and some of you are 'trusted' more to be higher up in the pecking order or to even get send outside to do who knows what. Smells like a setup for coercing or programming Mutants into useful little agents to me."

[Narrator]

10B didn't seem to entirely follow, but at this point it didn't so much matter how much he gleaned.

Three large, burly patients made themselves known to Robin. They looked between each other before a female spoke up and asked-

"Sooo... I just... grab your leg and slam you at the door?"

[Robin Stanton]

"I mean, ideally you'd find a seam to jam me into and not just wail on the door." Robin chuckles as she shrinks down, pink darkening to red as she condenses down into a crowbar, precariously standing upright for a moment before gravity asserts itself and she falls over with a loud clank.

[Narrator]

"Oooohhhh. You meant that crowbar thing literally." She laughed, collecting the Robin-Bar from the floor to have a go at the door. She attempted to jimmy Robin into the crack between the jamb and the sliding automated door, but was failing.

"Can you maybe be longer? Maybe if all of us tried at once."

[Robin Stanton]

"Sure thing!" the crowbar talks and the woman can feel the metal vibrating faintly as it does before elongating to more than twice it's length, somehow gaining the equivalent amount of weight in the process.

[Narrator]

The other two bruisers came to join the first, and the trio worked in unison on the door.

"1,2,3!"

It was still harder than one would think thanks to the end of the crowbar having to be forced deep into the crevice between the wall and the door.

[Robin Stanton]

Fortunately for them, this crowbar was able to extend itself into even just a tiny bit of progress to help pry the door open.

[Narrator]

Between Robin's quick work, and the patients working together, they managed to force open the door into the greater complex.

[Victor Freud]

After what had felt like hours, Victor had succeeded in cutting in the grating a hole large enough for him to squeeze through, and allowed himself to fall to... whatever lay below. Once he was on his feet he regained his former stature and immediately fished his phone out of his pocket to call Chisaki and Chase.

[Narrator]

Soft though tall grass is what Victor tumbled out onto safely, and no one was around to bother his call to Chase and Chisaki.

[Chase Delacroix]

Chase picked up immediately.

"Oh thank God. Where the hell are you?"

[Chisaki Watanabe]

For her part, Chisaki seemed incredibly calm about the missing duo. She had faith that the two of them knew what they were doing, or they wouldn't have done it.... right?

As such, she had not yet called in the cavalry.

[Victor Freud]

"That's... a really good question. I just got outside of the facility via the vents, and it looks like I'm in a field or something. Give me a second and I'll check."

Victor looked at his phone and opened the maps app to see if it could give him a better idea of where he was.

[Narrator]

Looking at Google maps would be a bit baffling, as he wasn't exactly certain where he was taken to, but as he zoomed out he would find that he was in a large patch of English countyside, still in the south of England.

Also, the meadow he was standing on seemed incredibly familiar.

[Victor Freud]

"... Chase, did you guys move your van after Robin and I disappeared?" Victor asked over the phone.

[Chase Delacroix]

"Not an inch. Why?" he asked. He was beginning to expect he was about to be very annoyed.

[Victor Freud]

"You've got binoc's, right? Do me a favour and have a look around." On a hunch, Victor unfastened his coat, took it off, and began to wave it around above his head by it's sleeve.

[Chase Delacroix]

He put the phone on the dash, leaving it on speaker. Raising the binoculars, he tried to spot Vic in the moonlit meadow.

"Not sure I can make out anything this time of night."

[Narrator]

The moon was bright enough and the meadow open enough that after a moment, Chase indeed would make out some movement.

[Chase Delacroix]

He groaned.

"Son of a bitch. We've been right on top of them the whole time."

[Chisaki Watanabe]

"It is underground?" She asked.

"I could dig it out.... But we need to get back up before I do. It could cause a panic if we break in, and they may result in someone getting hurt."

[Victor Freud]

Vic COULD have set off a flare or something, but he had no idea if there was any kind of surveillance of the surface or not.

"It looks to be underground, I had to climb up a vertical vent to get back to this field. I... can't really say how deep it is. But if you can get people here I should be able to get them in the way I got out. But whatever you're doing, do it quick; Robin is still inside, and the last time I saw her she was being chased by orderlies or something."

[Chase Delacroix]

"Then let's get ourselves ready."

Chase hung up made a call to assemble the X-Men.

[Narrator]

It didn't take long for a team to assemble and arrive at Chase's location, all things considered. After all the driving about and although they were definitely somewhere in the countryside as it turns out, they hadn't even left Surrey, and were just a hop, skip, or a jump by any of the bevy of transportation methods available to a highly advanced tactical team like The X-Men.

[Leo Eskandari]

The facility in question was enough like Evo's zoo that Leo had felt duty-bound to answer the call. Still, it was his first official X-Man outing so he was nervous and eager to prove to himself that he was up to the task.

"Chimera, reportin for duty," he told Chase and Chisaki, using his newly chosen codename for the first time.

[Chase Delacroix]

"No need for formality, big guy," Chase smirked, "But I like the enthusiasm."

[Samantha McManus]

"Let's not get too casual here," Sam says. "We've got people stuck inside. Do we have any contact with them?"

[Chase Delacroix]

"None at all. As such we have no idea what we'll be facing once we breach the facility," Chase answered.

[Will Stanton]

"I'm sure the situation is well in hand," Will said, decked out in his slightly off X-Team uniform. "We have an expert in there, after all."

"...Well, sort of an expert. She is, at the very least, good at making good trouble."