Sometimes I find myself missing the old days. Not the real old days, mind, not the ones at the very beginning where we were all holed up in rat-trap motels eating top ramen and sleeping on the floor. No, I wouldn't relive that if you paid me. Life might suck now, but back then, there were fucking bedbugs.

I'm talking about when we really hit our stride. When Erik finally had enough cash to buy us a boat. When we went out in to the middle of the ocean and he raised a massive fucking rock right out of the bottom of the sea. When he hollowed it out with these huge balls of metal, and told us that it was our new home. The island.

Sure, it stank like rot for a good month after he raised it, and we were always cleaning gunk out of the tunnels and finding dead fish, but those were just details. We had a home. And the whole future…it was all clean. Lay out ahead of us. There was so much shit we had to do. Well, so much work I had to do, really. I was the one with the technical know-how so it was up to me to figure out how we were gonna power this fucking place, and defense systems and plumbing (which, believe it or not, was actually the easiest part. Magneto drilled all the holes like he'd hollowed out the island, the rest was simple). To be honest, I really didn't have much of an idea about any of that stuff. I'd just always been good with my hands. Good with machines. Erik just sat me down, gave me a pile of books nearly as tall as I was and told me to get to work. Guess I caught on pretty quick.

The island used to be quiet. Sort of a sanctuary. It was this big empty place. I know I'm not good with words, here, but you've gotta know what I mean. Now it's a fucking zoo. People are packed in here like sardines. And that's not the only thing that's changed.

I know I got the short end of the stick when it came to powers. Sure, they're useful. I can use 'em to my advantage, but when people are trying to get things done, they look at a lineup and go, 'Hmm, who do I want, the guy who can start fires with his mind, or the green guy who can…jump really high?' it ain't much of a contest. Doesn't matter that I'm a good fighter. That ditz down the hall who can make those glowy bombs can kill twenty guys with one blast. I could fight that many. Maybe. But it'd take time. So I'm stuck with recon, which I fucking hate. Sure, the whole wall-crawling thing sort of lends itself to being sneaky, but it's no fun. I never get to bash heads anymore.

The only stuff I ever do around the island is maintenance. Sure, Erik goes on and on about how I 'keep the nerve center of the Brotherhood alive' or some such shit but I know, and everybody else knows, that I'm a glorified handyman. Janitor. Whatever. Mystique's happier than ever, of course. She's still second in command. Vic couldn't care less either way. The newbies get one look at his claws and stay out of his way. I had to kick a couple of asses before the Kermit jokes stopped. It was the most fun I'd had in months. Depressing.

It just used to be better with the four of us, up against the world. We were a small, elite unit. We all knew each other, we relied on each other. I guess if I'm gonna get all sappy anyway, I might as well say it—we were our own little dysfunctional family. Now I don't know half the people on this bloody island. They let anyone with a pulse and an active X-Gene waltz through the goddamn door. No, I don't know them, but they know me. I'm easy to pick out in a crowd.
That's another thing. We don't got as many freaks as we used to. See, that's what I always thought was wrong with Xavier's team. They're mostly pretties. The only two freaks I can name are that Nightcrawler kid and the doc. Angel doesn't count. Sure, he's got wings, but he's got a pretty-boy face, just like the rest of them. It's because of that the X-Men just can't get us. They don't understand that what they're trying to do is fucking impossible because they've always been able to pass.

Anyway. Don't want to get in to that. I'll be talking all night if I start on that. Sure, we outnumber the X-Men now, but it's all about quantity and quality. These new recruits didn't have the training that I had when I joined up. There's just too many of them, and too few of us original members to train them. It's not gonna end well.

The ditz down the hall tried to talk to me today while I was in the middle of working. You think being under car, covered in engine grease with headphones on would be message enough for some people, but no. She started talking about the car I was under like she was some sorta expert, but it was fucking obvious she'd looked up the specs on Wikipedia not five minutes ago. No idea who she's trying to impress. She finally got the picture—took me about ten minutes of responding grunts and shrugs but I think something finally got through to that little peroxide drenched brain of hers. The wonders never bloody cease.

Erik called me in to his office today. The solar panels on the west side of the island are on the fritz again, apparently, and the west wing's been experiencing brown outs all afternoon. Everything's breaking around here. We just have too many people now. Brown outs aren't that urgent anyway. And that little fuck Pyro is in the west wing. I figured I'd let him suffer a little longer. I wasn't even done gathering up the parts to fix the damn things before he called me back again, and told me tomorrow we're going to visit the Morlocks.

Yeah, them.

People think I have an unhealthy attitude towards humans and pretties, look at those poor sods. At least I don't think I should be living in a shithole. Honestly, I've been there. They say they live in inactive tunnels, but you can never really get the shit smell out of a sewer. And there are rats. Perfectly nutritional, rats, but they're creepy. They skitter all over the place and got those beady little eyes. Unsettling.

Anyway, he wants me and Mystique in his little entourage to the underworld. Get a few freaks on the docket to make us look more attractive, right? Nice to know I'm useful for something. For fuck's sake, you know I really wouldn't mind if he just said outright 'hey, Toad, yeah, you're the freakiest guy we got so we gotta bring you with to make nice with the Morlocks, is that okay?' I'd be fine with that. That'd be fantastic. But no, it's all 'after much consideration, you're the best one for the job' like suddenly I'm a master of diplomacy and a big people person. Fucking lovely, innit?