The X-Men Present: Sherlock Holmes-A Study in Scarlet

Disclaimer: Really? I have to write a disclaimer for works published on a fanfiction site?

There was a lot of technical jargon I had to sort through but I tried to sort through most of them. Hopefully, it should be less confusing now.

Note: This story is both historical and humorous. I don't think it is insane-funny like my Alice In Wonderland parody, so be warned: Strictly for literature lovers only! If you want more laughs, go read the other one. However, this does have some aspects of humor in it.

Also, only characters that have already been mentioned are allowed to comment during my incredibly rare interludes. For example, I have the faintest idea that Jubilee might be in here somewhere (maybe) but you won't see her comment on my writing. Yeah, mine differs from Chellerbelle's.

Chapter 1- Mr Sherlock Holmes

It was the year 1878. I, Dr Henry McCoy, took my-

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'I'm Doctor Watson?' interjects Beast.

Well, yeah, since you're actually a doctor.

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-degree of Doctor of Medicine at the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to undergo the course prescribed for Army surgeons. Having completed my studies there, I was then sent to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers-

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'The what?' asks Henry.

I have absolutely no idea.

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-as an assistant surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at that time, and before I could join it, the second Afghan war had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I found out that the corps had already moved deep into the enemy's country. Along with other officers who were in the same situation as me, I followed the unit and managed to reach Candahar safely. I found my regiment and entered upon my new duties at once. However, while the war campaign brought glory and honors to many, to me it only brought misfortune and disaster. While fighting in the fatal battle of Maiwand, I was struck in the shoulder by a bullet, which shattered my bone and grazed an artery. I might have fallen into the hands of the enemy were it not for the valiant efforts of Logan, my orderly, who threw me onto a horse and brought me safely to the British lines. Logan, amazingly, survived several vicious injuries much worse than the one suffered by I- who later wondered out loud if Logan had some sort of miracle 'healing factor'.

Worn with pain, weak from the hardships I had suffered, I was sent to a hospital in Peshawar. There, I rallied myself, and improved enough to be able to walk about the wards and even bask a little upon the veranda. It was a pity, then, that this peace did not last long. I was struck down by a severe fever. For months after, my life was despaired of- but when I finally came to, I was so emaciated that a medical board demanded that I be sent back to England immediately. On arriving at Portsmouth jetty, I was expected-by none other than the government itself- to spend the next nine months attempting to regain some semblance of health.

I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air- or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will allow a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, where all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a meaningless existence and spending money more freely than I ought to. So alarming did the state of my finances become that I was left with only two choices: leave the metropolis and live in the country, or make a complete alteration in my style of living. Choosing the latter, I began by leaving the hotel and trying to find some less pretentious and less expensive quarters.

On the very day that I had come to this conclusion, I was having a drink at the Criterion Bar when someone tapped my shoulder. Turning around, I recognized young Bobby Drake, an acquaintance of mine. The sight of a friendly face in the great wilderness of London is a pleasant thing to a lonely man. In old days, Bobby had never been a particular crony of mine, but now I eagerly hailed him. He, in turn, seemed delighted to see me. Joyous as I was, I asked him to lunch with me and he accepted. We started off for the Holborn in a hansom.

'What the heck have you been doing, Watson?' he asked in blunt wonder as we rattled through the crowded London streets. 'You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut.'

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'No one uses language like that nowadays,' Bobby pointed out. 'My first line is obviously modern while my second is… Questionable.'

I don't want to disrespect Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by saying something like 'You're really thin and really brown'. It's his novel, so I've decided to imprint his style of writing instead. And uh, I thought 'What the heck have…' would fit this scene better…

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I gave him a short sketch of my misadventures, and had hardly concluded it by the time we reached out destination.

'Poor dude!' he answered. 'What are you up to now?'

'Looking for lodgings,' I answered. 'Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.'

'Weird,' remarked Bobby. 'You are the second man today that has said that to me.'

'And who was the first?'

'A fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory at the hospital. He was bemoaning himself this morning because he could not find someone to go halves with him in some nice rooms which he had found but which were too expensive for him.'

'Oh my stars and garters!' I cried. 'If he really wants someone else to share the rooms and the expense, I am the very man for him. I should prefer a partner to being alone.'

Young Bobby looked at me rather strangely. 'You don't know Charles Xavier yet,' he said. 'Perhaps you would not care for him as a constant companion.'

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Professor Xavier wheels himself into the room. 'Excellent,' he said. 'I'm playing the role of a famous detective whose name even teenagers recognize. (1)

Um, don't celebrate too soon. There are pros and cons to every one of my roles.

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'Why, what is there against him?'

'I didn't say there was anything against him. He is just a little queer in his ideas- an enthusiast in some branches of science. As far as I know, he is a decent fellow.'

'A medical student, I suppose?' I asked.

'No- I have no idea what he intends to study. He is well up
in anatomy and he is a first-class chemist; but as far as I know, he has never taken any systematic medical classes. His studies are very eccentric but he has amassed a lot of uncommon knowledge that would astonish his professors.'

'Did you ever ask him what he was going in for?'

'No; he is not a man that is easy to draw out, although he can be communicative enough when the fancy seizes him.'

'I should like to meet him,' I decided. 'If I am to lodge with anyone, I should prefer a quiet and studious man as I am not strong enough yet to bear much noise or excitement. I had enough of both in Afghanistan to last me for a lifetime. How could I meet this friend of yours?'

'He should be at the laboratory,' replied Bobby. 'He either avoids the place for weeks or spends days there morning and night. I have a hunch it will be the latter. Let's go over there after lunch.'

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Bobby looks puzzled. 'So he's a social recluse, then?'

Sort of…

Xavier looks offended.

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I answered, 'Certainly,' and the conversation drifted away into other channels.

After lunch, as we made our way to the hospital housing the laboratory, Bobby provided me a few more details about the gentleman I was taking on as a fellow lodger. 'Don't blame me if you don't get on with him, okay? I know nothing more of him than I have learned from meeting him occasionally in the lab. You proposed this arrangement, so you must not hold me responsible.'

'If we do not get on, I shall simply part ways with him,' I answered. 'It seems to me that you have some reason for washing your hands of the matter,' I added, looking hard at Bobby. 'Is this fellow's temper really so formidable?'

'Well,' he replied thoughtfully. 'Xavier is a little too scientific; it borders on cold-bloodedness. I could imagine him injecting a friend with some vegetable alkaloid- not out of malevolence, but simply to study the effects. To do him justice, however, he would take the alkaloid himself with the same readiness. He appears to have a passion for exact and definite knowledge.'

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'Inject a friend with vegetable alkaloid!' gasped Xavier. 'Is this man solving crimes or committing them?!'

'What's vegetable alkaloid?' whispered Bobby to me.

No idea…

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'Very right it is, too.'

'Indeed, but surely it is too much for him to beat the subjects in the dissecting-room with his walking-stick.'

'What! Beating the subjects!'

'To verify how far bruises can be produced into death. I saw him at it with my own eyes.'

'And yet you say he is not a medical student?'

'Heaven knows what the objects of his studies are. But here we are, and you must form your own impressions about him.' As he spoke, we turned down a narrow lane and passed through a small side door, which opened into a wing of the hospital. It was all too familiar to me, and I needed no guidance as we ascended the bleak stone staircase and made our way down the long corridor, lined with whitewashed walls and dun-coloured doors. Near the end, a low passageway branched away from it and led to the chemical laboratory.

It was a lofty chamber, littered with countless bottles. Broad tables were placed throughout, groaning under the combined weight of retorts, test-tubes and Bunsen burners. There was only one student in the room, hunched over at a distant table and fully absorbed in his work. At the sound of our steps, he glanced around and sprang to his feet. 'I've found it! At long last, I've found it!' he shouted to Bobby, running towards us, clutching a test tube in his hand. 'I have a re-agent which is precipitated by haemoglobin, and by nothing else.' Had he discovered a gold mine, greater delight could not have shone upon his features.

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'Um, okay, good for you,' says Bobby in uncertainty. The adults exchange a look and share a laugh.

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'Dr. McCoy, Mr. Charles Xavier,' said Bobby, introducing us.

'How are you?' he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength that I had not expected. 'You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.'

'How on Earth did you know that?' I asked in astonishment.

'Never mind,' he replied, chuckling away to himself. 'The question now is about haemoglobin. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?'

'It is certainly interesting,' I answered, 'but practically-'

'Why, man, it is the most practical medico-legal discovery for years. Don't you see that it has given us an infallible test for blood stains? Come over here!' Eagerly, he seized me by my coat sleeve and dragged me over to the table at which he had been working. 'Let us have some fresh blood,' he said, digging a needle into his finger and drawing some blood from it into a chemical pipette. 'Now, I add this small quantity of blood to a litre of water. You see that the resulting mixture has the appearance of pure water. The proportion of blood cannot possibly be more than one in a million. However, I have no doubt that I will be able to obtain the reaction I expect.' As he spoke, he threw a few white crystals into the vessel containing the blood and water. Then, he added some drops of a transparent fluid. In an instant, the contents assumed a dull mahogany color, and a brownish dust was precipitated to the bottom of the glass jar.

'Ha! Ha!' cried Xavier, clapping his hands together like a child presented with a new toy.

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Heh, Prof, you seem slightly round the bend in this one.

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'What do you think of it?'

'It seems to be a very delicate test,' I remarked.

'Beautiful! The old guaiacum test was very clumsy and uncertain. So is the microscopic examination for blood corpuscles. The latter is useless if the stains are a few hours old. Now, my test appears to work well regardless of whether the blood is old or new. Had it been invented long ago, hundreds of men now walking the earth would pay the penalty for their crimes.'

'Indeed,' I murmured, not really sure what he was talking about but trying to be polite.

'Criminal cases are continually hinging upon that one point. A man is suspected of a crime months after it has been committed. His clothes are examined and brownish stains are discovered on them. Are they blood stains, or mud stains, or rust stains, or food stains, or what are they? That is a question which has puzzled many experts, because there was no reliable test. Now we have the Charles Xavier test, and there will no longer be any difficulty.'

His eyes glittered as he spoke, and he put his hand over his heart and bowed as if to some applauding crowd conjured up by his imagination.

'You are to be congratulated,' I remarked, slightly surprised by his extreme enthusiasm.

'There was the case of Von Bischoff at Frankfort last year. He would certainly have been hung had this test been in existence. Then there was Mason of Bradford, and the notorious Muller, and Lefevre of Montpellier, and Samson of New Orleans. I could name a score of cases in which it would have been decisive.'

'You seem to be a walking calendar of crime,' laughed Bobby. 'You might start a paper about that. Call it the 'Police News of the Past'.'

'Very interesting reading it would make, too,' remarked Xavier, sticking a small piece of plaster over the cut in his finger. 'I have to be careful, because I dabble in poisons a great deal,' he explained to me. I noticed that his hand was mottled all over with similar pieces of plaster, and some were discolored from strong acids.

'We came here on business,' said Bobby. 'My friend here wants to take diggings; and as you were complaining that you could get no one to go halves with you, I thought that I had better bring you together.'

Xavier seemed delighted at the idea of sharing his rooms with me. 'I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street,' he said, 'which would suit us perfectly. You don't mind the smell of strong tobacco, I hope?'

'I always smoke 'ships' myself,' I answered.

'Excellent. I generally have chemicals about, and I occasionally conduct experiments. Would that annoy you?'

'By no means.'

'Let's see- what are my other shortcomings? I sometimes get in the dumps, and I don't open my mouth for days on end. You mustn't think I'm sulky when I do that. Just leave me alone, and I'll soon be all right. What have you to confess now? It's just as well for two fellows to know the worst of each other before they begin to live together.'

I laughed at this cross-examination. 'I keep a bulldog pup,' I said, 'and I object to rows because my nerves are shaken. I also get up at ungodly hours, and I am extremely lazy. I have another set of vices but those are the principal ones.'

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'He's also blue, fuzzy, and he leaves fur all over the place,' remarked Bobby in a prim Victorian accent.

'I do not!' retorts Hank.

'Yes you do.'

'Do not.'

'Do.'

'Do not.'

'Do.'

'Do not.'

BANANAS ARE EVIL. End of argument.

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'Would you be offended by violins?' he asked anxiously.

'It depends on the player. A well-played one is a treat for the gods- but a terrible one-'

'Oh, that's all right,' he cried with a merry laugh. 'I think we may consider this as settled- that is, if the rooms are agreeable to you.'

'When shall we see them?'

'Call for me at noon tomorrow, and we'll go together and settle everything.'

I agreed to this. Bobby and I left Xavier working along his chemicals, and we walked together towards the hotel.

'By the way, ' I asked suddenly and turning to Bobby, 'how the deuce did he know I had come from Afghanistan?'

Bobby smiled. 'That's a little peculiarity of his; you're not the first person wanting to know how he figures things out.'

'Oh, a mystery is it? This is very piquant. I am much obliged to you for bringing us together. 'The proper study of mankind is man,' you know.'

Bobby merely shrugged. 'You must study him, then. However, I daresay you'll find him a knotty problem. Goodbye.'

I left him and continued on to my hotel, considerably interested in my new acquaintance.

(1): No offence, but you have to admit, some teenage girls are really suffering from brain cell depletion ('Oh my God! Did you like, hear about the new Girls' Generation album? It's like so so so cool! I got my daddy to like buy it for me!' and not a clue about what is going on in class) … Not all, though.

12 pages. Woah.