"Joseph!" came a scream with a Cajun accent. " Joseph, Joseph, Joseph !!!!"
The Wind-rider sighed as she basked in the sun of the perfect day she'd created. Her sun-bed was on the gravel outside the garage door. Remy had been in a rather good mood this morning and she had decided that he needed some adult supervision. Besides, intuition had told her this was a bad idea. "Remy," she sighed "are you using that poor man's name as a swear word again?"
"Joemmph!" came the reply.
Curious, Storm put down her magazine and poked her head around the garage door. To the scene she raised an elegant white eyebrow. To the man underneath the scene, she wagged a stern finger.
"I told you not to play with Hank's new toy. He isn't going to be very pleased, is he?" Storm reprimanded, exerting the power all women have to make grown men feel three years old.
"No'm" said the shamefaced thief, staring desperately at the floor, which was about four inches from his nose. He crawled out from under the remains of the Virtual Reality machine and surveyed the wreckage. He was pretty sure Hank would tear him limb from limb and then do more painful things to him, if he caught him. He was contemplating the quickest way out of the country when a strange sound caught his attention. "Ro', what's dat humming?"
"I don't know Remy," Storm wrinkled her nose taking a delicate sniff. "Where are your socks?" she enquired.
"On my feet!" Remy told her indignantly, taking a quick look to make sure. "An' you know de kind of humming I mean!"
" The kind that is accompanied by a greenish glow?"
"Quoi?" Remy turned back to the garage. There was a sickly green light shining from between cracks in the collapsed V.R. machine. Then the pile of mechanical debris moved. The movement became a cascade as a mess of sandy brown hair popped out.
Panic ran through Remy's brain. The hair became a head , complete with visor. Aaargh! He'd squashed Scott! Alarm klaxons blared through his skull as Remy turned to make himself scarce, only to be confronted by a cross-armed, eyebrow raising, foot-tapping, Ororo. Great, now he was dead, very dead, very, very, very, very, very......Stuff Apocalypse, Juggernaut, and Magneto; Scott on one of his rants was worse.
First he started spitting, then spraying, then using leader-techni-babble. Sometime during this he'd go red and you'd be in constant fear that his headteacher was going to explode and you'd be the one left trying to clear up the mess while being TKed into various walls by Jean.
Remy had often wondered if Scott realised that he'd be even more effective in combat if he lectured their enemies to death. If they could only get all the evil despots and arch nemeses into one room. Dress them in unsuitable attire for taking over the world, universe, multiverse, alternate realities, heaven, hells etc. and set Scott loose on them. They'd get rid of all evil in one fell swoop, and probably end up with a bunch of snivelling, bootlickin', new recruited Scott wannabes at the same time. Of course doing this to even your worst enemy would be barbaric but Remy was stalling for time to avoid getting back to the plot. Darn! Too late.
Remy's life began passing before his eyes. He was just getting to a good part (involving Rogue and a lot of whipped cream) when he took a good look at "Scott". Now, to Remy, and probably most women in the world, especially Jean, Scott had always seemed, well, quite small. But three foot six? That was ridiculous.
Remy looked at Stormy. Stormy looked at Remy.
"Don't think me that!" Ororo told him.
It took Remy a moment to figure this out. " How you know what I be t'inkin'?"
Ororo sighed. "You always think of me as Stormy."
"Not when 'm bein' serious."
"You're not being serious now."
"I should be. Scott's about to kill me!"
"I do not believe this is our Scott."
"Me neither."
"So why bring up the subject of being serious?"
"I dunno. Jus' like correctin' you I s'pose."
"Remy you are impossible. Something very strange is happening in the back of our garage and you are not taking it very seriously!"
"I t'ought we just establish dat........ Stormy."
"We did! And don't call me..."
"I wasn' callin' you Stormy."
"Really?! Who was it then!?"
"Her." Remy pointed into the garage where another head had just emerged.
"Oh my!" Said Ororo, staring into miniature versions of her own blue cat-eyes.
The little Storm turned to the littler Scott. "Um, Cycwops? We're in the back of a garage, I fink. Will the plan work this time?"
"Only one way to find out Thtorm. RUN!!!!!!!"
Part 2
"Dat hurt" commented Remy as he picked himself up and offered a hand to Ororo where she sat on the floor. She stood up, scowling.
"Well, that was not very successful." She turned to see the gang of X-Babies who had appeared and then high-tailed it out across the lawn. This involved a lot of crashing into each other and falling over, so they hadn't gone very far but Storm's pride was still wounded. "I do not believe that just happened."
"Oui, how'd Hank's machine create a portal to the Mojoverse and drag the X-Babies through?"
"Well, actually I was wondering how we, having the power to prevent world wide destruction by the likes of the Brotherhood and Apocalypse, cannot manage to contain a bunch of overactive children."
"Oh, yeah, dat too," Remy agreed. They turned back to the X-Babies. "Y' know, dey look even smaller from this distance."
Ororo checked her watch. "Scott, Henry and Bishop will be back soon."
"Wanna go catch them before Scott comes back and has a seizure?"
Ororo frowned and considered this for a minute. "Yes." One on foot, one in the air, the X-Men chased their smaller counterparts across the massive lawns of the estate.
The Danger Room was a mess. Currently simulating a kitchen, there was flour everywhere and the taps were threatening to overflow. On every surface, including the ceiling, there were X-Babies. Cowering under the table were Remy and Ororo. Remy stuck his head out long enough to get a gob of wet flour in the ear before retreating to their sanctuary. Ororo was not happy. In fact she'd had better days fighting green slime monsters up to her neck in the fetid swamps of Dimension X*.
"Why are we here Remy?" she enquired in her most imperious voice.
"Well, I figured the real kitchen wasn't a good idea?" he suggested hopefully, trying to extract the flour goop from his ear.
"Why a kitchen?! Of all the things you could have chosen- why not a peaceful meadow, with gentle breezes, warm sun ..... but no, you chose a kitchen complete with plenty of ammunition and things to destroy!"
"But what about the cow pats ...?" he mumbled, backing as far as the table would allow. Storm acting like Scott was even more scary than Scott acting like Scott (or even Scott acting like Storm!).
Ororo, getting really into the swing of it now, continued her tirade. "Is that supposed to be funny? Why didn't you try to remove the extraneous objects, if you had to bring us here!?! Did you think at all or did your brain melt along with your heart when Baby Rogue started making googoo eyes at you?!"
Dangerous though it was, Remy simply had to put her right on that one. "It might have been a little easier to t'ink if someone hadn't been frying my behind with lightening bolts at the time!" he yelled back.
" If your butt were not so big it would not have got in the way when I was aiming at little Iceman. Besides, if you hadn't been messing about with Hank's equipment in the first place," she shrieked, doing a really good impression of Scott now, "this whole fiasco would never have happened. This is all you fault, Remy LeBeau, so what are you going to do about it?!!?!!"
Remy was trying to come up with a smart-alec reply to this when he noticed that he could hear himself think. All activity in the room had come to a standstill as the X-Babies ventured over to investigate the screaming.
Silence reigned supreme for all of five seconds. Then, a tiny grey rain-cloud appeared over little Storm's head and a miniature thunderstorm erupted as she began to cry.
"Oh no, dis be all your fault," he glowered at Ororo, who looked back with disdain. Remy crawled out from under the table and went to comfort the sobbing child. He put his arm around her, while trying unsuccessfully to avoid the downpour, which rapidly drenched him through to his underwear, not to mention the occasional sizzle of lightening boltlets which threatened to ignite any remaining dry patches.
"You're mad at me," she wailed, pushing him away, much to his relief.
He glanced over to Ororo, who was ignoring him. "Come on now, Stormy, don't wanna be making a scene do we?"
There was a snort from under the table, but little Storm continued to moan. A puddle was forming on the floor so Remy turned back to Ororo.
"'Ro, you gotta stop de rain or dere'll be a flood.
"Fine," came the reply. "We'll have two then," and even through the thick walls of the Danger Room, the loud thunder claps outside could be heard. "This is your fault, handle it."
Remy turned back to the puddle when he felt a tiny hand tap his shoulder.
"Ah'm awful sorry, Remy sugah suh, but Ah think Ah used my powers on Ororo back then." She batted her long eye lashes at him and Remy sighed.
"She's so cute." He turned to Ororo. "How come you're not unconscious?"
"How come you never call me Remy?" little Gambit asked, but Rogue ignored him.
Rogue seated herself in Remy's lap as little Gambit scowled.
"Well, when we came through that portal thingy, our powers got all screwed up. So when I touched...."
" Crashed into," corrected little Bishop.
"Touched her," continued Rogue, "Ah gave her a bit of me, 'stead of the other way round. Now she's cute, with attitude !" Little Rogue grinned proudly.
"How come you never look at me like that?" demanded little Gambit.
"Hush up, Sugah," Rogue batted him away.
"Cute?" Remy could think of a number of other words to describe Ororo at the moment.
"Well, Ah'm not sure it worked all the way this time."
"So all your powers have changed?" asked Remy. There were nods all round apart from the two Storms.
"Exthept for Thtorm's," put in little Cyclops. "Thee always rainth on herthelf." He did a very good impression of rolling his eyes for someone who was wearing a visor.
"How come ..."
"Be quiet, Gambit," Rogue told him. Little Gambit joined Ororo and Storm sulking.
Remy looked over his tiny charges. "OK guys, I need you to work with me now, all right?" They nodded in unison.
Remy checked his watch. "We got twenty minutes till Scott, Bish, an' Hank get back. We got to clean the garage, repair the Virtual Reality machine an' think of a way to get you home."
"OK team. Let'th move out!" They marched out in single file, leaving the Storms and little Gambit sulking in the rapidly growing puddle.
On their way to the garage little Scott whispered conspiratorially to Remy. "You might want to think up a reathon why we're here ath well."
Remy raised an eyebrow. He hadn't thought of that. He liked this Scott already. "T'anks!" he grinned.
Remy stopped off quickly to change out of his scorched, soggy, flour-covered clothes. Then he joined the clean-up that little Scott had organised. "Just one question," Remy asked him as Scott paused for breath between orders. "Why'd you run when you first came t'rough de portal?"
"We were worried that the Baby Bad-Dudeth ~,that'th BBDth for short, were chathing uth."
"De what?"
"Thurely thomeone ath thmart ath you hath heard of them?"
Remy ducked to avoid the thpray - er thorry the spray.
"They were the latht remnant of entertainment left on Mojoworld after Dathler and Longthot overthrew Mojo II."
"Y' mean li'l Magneto and Juggernaut and dat."
"Prethithely."
"But in de end dey didn' follow you?"
"Oh yeth, they did; they headed off down that road there. After that the troopth were jutht a little exthited. ...... Um, why do you look like you've thwallowed a thnail?"
"You're .. tellin' ...me ... thatabunchof tinybadguysareheadedforSalemCenter?!!!!????!?!"
"Well, when you put it like thaaaat, I thee your point. Oh dear."
* Dimension X was something to do with the Ninja Turtles if I remember rightly. Ororo's probably never been there unless Marvel had one as well. Oh well!
~ Don't ask! It was all my co-writer's idea.
Comments are very welcome. I hope there aren't too many English-isms in this, I guess most of the audience are from the States, so my spellings are probably weird too. (Oh, and Do sveedanya is not Dos veedanya. Just had to get that off my chest.) Thank you.