The Best Deceptions: The Finale, Part I: Trouble in Paradise (Backdated)

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After escaping to the Florida Keys, the Hayes family are on their way back their from Miami when they are intercepted by Nanny, her Lost Children, and Orphan Maker.



Molly sat in the back of their rented sedan, watching the water go by as they drove back toward the tiny island from Miami. They'd been there before when they went on vacation sometimes. But it was a long time ago. In Miami, they got a lot of food and some cell phones and went to some tall guy's house. She had to wait with her mom in his living room. He gave her a KitKat bar and let her watch TV.

Dad came out with some new driver's licenses and some passports. She didn't know they made those things at people's houses too. They didn't have their names on them either. It said their last name was Stone. Mom said that was their new last name now. They couldn't use the old one anymore.

Mom and dad had been really nervous lately. She didn't know why they'd set the house on fire after that guy broke into the house. She was a little sad, though. She only got to bring two hats with her. She could fit more in her suitcase but mom said she had to bring clothes. Stupid clothes.

"You know, this was really the wrong year to quit smoking." Gene let his head bounce off the back of the seat for a moment, before checking the time again for the hundredth time. His fingers beat a nervous tattoo against the steering wheel. After years of carefully concealing their sympathies, offering support through carefully hidden channels and never making any kind of public waves, now they were fugitives.

"It's a new start," Alice replied as brightly as she could, although the smile didn't reach her eyes. ~Don't say too much in front of Molly, Gene. I'm not sure how many more wipes she can take.~ "Think of it as an extended vacation."

Molly stared out at the water. It was so blue. Florida was warm like LA but it didn't feel like LA. She rested her chin in her hand, then frowned.

"And then we'll get to go back to LA?" she said hopefully. She continued to watch the water without really waiting for an answer, knowing all she'd hear was no. Mom and Dad really were acting funny. They tried to hide it but she knew something was definitely wrong.

Peter clambered out of the back of the rented camper, and looked up towards the sky. It was a clear day, only a few clouds in sight. He was going to ruin someone's vacation, which didn't make him happy. But Nanny had said once they rescued this little girl, they could all go to the beach, and the people on the highway were polluters and speeders and let their children eat at McDonalds all the time instead of once in a while as a treat. So he didn't mind so much wading out into traffic and putting his fist into the hood of the first car that squealed to a stop. He waited until the people got out, and then he kicked the car. By then a lot of other cars had stopped, and his kick sent the first car into a truck, and the truck into another car, and it was just a mess.

He waved at Nanny, where he could see her in the window of the camper, and then dragged the first car over to the side of the road, and sat down on it. Waiting was a lot less fun than wrecking cars, but he was going to be good, so he wouldn't get grounded. He'd been grounded once, and Lucy was grounded and also that would show that jerk Jack who was really the best kid. So there.

Gene could see the traffic slow, and as he edged around a car, the figure sitting on the top of a car that had been partial demolished and pulled sideways to block the highway. The problem was that concrete barriers separated him from the other lane, so turning around wasn't even an option. He could hit the mutant with his car, but that would endanger Molly. ~Alice, I think we have a problem.~

She squinted against the glare towards the figure. "Is that--" she began, before recognizing the shape. "How the hell did he find us?" She turned to Molly in the back seat. "Get down. Now." There was no room for debate in her voice.

Peeking from a window, Addie's eyes went wide on fear and surprise as Peter, well, did his thing, followed by a strong feeling of remorse which was only overpowered by the fear she had towards the woman she was sitting close to. Nanny wanted to find the Hayes girl and their parents to rescue her, and so she had asked Addie to find them. She was good at finding people, and so she had found them, because Nanny didn't accept failure. Lucy had failed, and she didn't want to be the same. No, it was better to do as told and keep quiet. Lowering her head from the window, Addie looked down as she bit her lower lip in silence. Nothing she could do.

Lucy climbed out of the car and stepped back so that everyone else could follow, then put Bonzo down beside her and concentrated on him.

"You're going to need to be careful," she told him as he started growing.

"'kay," he said, wiggling his hands at her.

"Don't get near the cars, 'specially if they catch fire." She frowned over at said cars. None of them seemed to be burning, at least.

"You got it," Bonzo said, giving her a smile as he turned to look out at the mayhem on the bridge with her. Lucy didn't like all this, she didn't really want to help Nanny, but she did it because... because bad things happened if she didn't. Her mind shied away from those half-memories.

"Kids. It's, well, teenagers." Gene said incredulously. A slightly sick feeling started to grow in his stomach as he looked at the group coming towards the car. It looked like SHIELD wasn't what they should have worried about. ~Alice, it's not us that they're after. It's Molly.~

~Molly?~ Alice's tone was frankly surprised. ~But she's not even a mutant...~ She looked over to her daughter, crouched in the back seat with one of those ridiculous hats of hers. "Kids or not, we can't let them take us. We'll have to make sure of that, whatever it takes."

Francine's redesigned chair enclosed her from the chest down in a smooth metallic shell, unbroken until it flared out at the bottom into a pair of tank treads. From the chest up, she was protected by an egg-shaped dome of clear bulletproof plexiglass.

She rolled out of the camper van and between the cars until she was past the barricade of vehicles that Peter had made. "Turn the abused child into my custody, and you may go without harm!" Her voice projected through a microphone in the chair. "If you are stubborn, you will be punished!"

~X~

Just when it seems like the Hayes family is cornered, the cavalry arrives in the form of the X-Men.



Kurt looked undeniably comical as he popped into view at that moment, dressed in a biohazard suit but with his feet encased in woolly socks sealed with duct tape. "I am sorry, Francine, but you are the one who will be punished. Back in jail."

Hank gritted his teeth as he fought the updrafts coming off the bridge and ocean as he narrowly missed the remnants of the old bridge next to the glittering new one in the X-Jet.

The task was made no less difficult by the fact he was dressed in a Level A Hazmat suit with his utility belt secured around the outside. He maneuvered the airliner so that the boarding ramp could extend to the side of the road and held the plane in a careful balance while shouting, "Last stop, five mile bridge! Let's go back up Nightcrawler!"

~Stealth jet with VTOL. It has to be SHIELD.~ Gene made up his mind, putting the car in gear. If he had to drive over a kid to keep his daughter safe, so be it. Better than in a SHIELD lab or a government training facility while he and Alice rotted in prison. "Hang on, Alice."

The car started moving and Jack couldn't have that. He couldn't have them getting the way they did when Peter had gone to get the girl the first time. He wouldn't disappoint Nanny the way the stupid one had. Brain buzzing about rapidly, he found a lug wrench and went after the car.

Jack was always fast but he was going to move as fast as possible to work on the escaping car. It hadn't gotten anywhere by the time Jack had the first two tires off, one in the front and one in the back on opposite sides of the vehicle.

The sudden lack of tires unbalanced the speeding vehicle sending it careening toward the barrier that separated the automobiles from the vividly blue ocean a quarter-mile below.

"Oh my stars and garters," Hank mumbled as he pushed the nose of the jet forward- hoping that no one was on the stairs. The jet swooped forward, just in time for the sedan to collide with the barrier- the nose of the jet keeping the stone barrier in place as the force of the impact against the two massive objects stopped the vehicle. The kinetic force transferred to the furthest object, sending the jet into a spin that took all of Hank's strength and agility to keep from turning critical components into the bridge or rapidly declining into the watery abyss below.

Finally, after a few tense moments, the jet was stable and he brought it to a landing on the bridge proper. Once the vehicle was firmly on the ground, the doctor let go of the stick and breathed a sigh of relief before mumbling,

"I'm getting too old for this."

~X~

While the X-Men are distracted by battling with the Lost Children, Nanny and Orphan Maker close in on the Hayes Family.



Monet was first out of the jet, shooting up into the air, a combination of aerial support and distraction while the others disembarked. "Oi! Fuckhead! You want to leave the car alone or not?" she yelled at the fast-moving kid below. There. She'd warned him and, frankly, that was more than most speedsters deserved. She dropped into freefall, angling herself toward him, confident that she'd provide, if nothing else, a bloody good distraction.

The yelling from above certainly had distracted Jack enough to allow the car its other two wheels. At least for now. His gaze moved upward to the girl who was apparently falling at him. Great tactic there.

"What's this, 'watch out or I'll land on you'?" Patience grew short, but he waited until she was impossibly close before ducking out of the way. "That's cute, but you're kinda slow lady." He dashed off, not caring if she'd give chase or not. He had to get that girl for Nanny. She'd be mad at him for nearly sending the girl off the bridge already.

Angel, having not been far behind Monet in getting out of the 'bird, hovered above the mess below so she could take stock. There were a lot of people running around - too many, it seemed. She could either decide to go after someone or ...

She had an idea. Angel spun in a circle to get a good look at the area around them. With that image in her mind, she flung out her hands to either side of her and pushed. Fire didn't show up but that wasn't her aim. She was trying to build a wall of heat, not fire, around their area to keep people in and people out.

This was turning into a disaster and those leather-wearing horrible people were here again. Francine rolled her tank-chair towards the car. Under the dome of plexiglass, her fingers flickered over controls, and the sides of the tank extended out into two grasper arms. "I will take this car apart like a discarded toy and take her by force. If you do not want to be harmed, you will let her go calmly." She could collect her other children later, this one was so very close, and she had to rescue her before any more harm came to the poor dear.

In the confusion, Peter had decided it was better to run and be safe than to get hurt. He'd been hurt once, by these people even, and he didn't like it at all. He began shoving through the barricade of vehicles, to try to get back to the camper. The girls were there, and he liked them, they were nice, and well, Jack could just get arrested. He didn't like Jack at all.

When the car hit the bridge it made a huge crunch sound and Molly felt like she was being tossed around like one of those hamster balls they had in science class. She peered through the seats, then all around her, trying to see. What the hockey sticks was going on?

The monster man who looked like a Transformer she remembered because she saw him out the window when he was running away at the house. She didn't know who the other lady was but she creeped her out, royally. She said she was abused? Huh? She had to look around a moment to realize they were talking about her.

Since they were on a bridge, she knew it was bad to stay in the car maybe. Especially after it almost went off a few minutes ago. And she thought a ghost took the tires 'cause the car suddenly got lower. But they couldn't get out or they'd get caught.

"Hey! Don't stay mean stuff about my mom and dad! Not cool!" Molly said. She'd try to beat them up but there were a lot of them. It wasn't like the boy at school. They were also bigger. At least the robot man was bigger. Maybe the guys in black would distract them so they could run away?

Francine smiled kindly, or so she thought. It was more of a sickly sweet false smile than anything that looked truly kind or gentle. "Dear child, you are too young to understand these things." Any tones of patience or kindness in her voice were ruined by the speakers that projected her voice outside of her plexiglass bubble.

The radio in his ear, which Peter did not like at all because it made his ear itch buzzed with Francine's voice. "Peter, my dear, will you please help your Nanny open up this car?" Even though he was scared, and he wanted to leave, he had to do what she said, that was the rule. And so he stomped back, armor protecting him as he pushed back through the path he had cleared.

He'd pulled the doors off cars before, that wasn't hard. The hard part was getting his hands in the windows to grab them without the glass going everywhere and cutting people up. And Nanny had told him cutting up the bad parents was fine, but cutting up nice children was not fine at all. So instead, he decided to try something new. Something he hadn't done before, but it looked easy enough. He punched through the front windshield of the car and pulled up, and as the metal began to separate from the body of the car, his grin grew wider and wider. The glass was in the front, not the back where the little girl was, and it was working.