This is an idea that popped into my head- nearly two months ago (I know… I'm slow) after reading Revenge of the Old Queen. You don't have to have know ROTOQ to understand this, you just won't know who Steve and Judy are.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. Just borrowed them. I don't really own all of the plot either. Just stole it and twisted it from a thing at school. I do own the sonic discombobulator. See? (holds it up for everyone to see). Right… anyway.

Where Do Babies Come From?

An investigation by Steve Majors

There is a time in a young man's life when confusion and curiosity are dominant emotions. Things, you find, are constantly being left unexplained and questions whirl around inside your skull.

For five-year-old Steve Majors the first of these questions was a common one: Where do babies come from? The question presented itself one Saturday afternoon when he was speaking on the phone with play date mate, Judy Brankmire.

'Omigosh, omigosh, Stevie, you won't believe what I got! You'll be so jealous!' the young girl squealed from over the line. 'Go on, guess what it is?'

'Is it a-'

'It's a baby brother! He's so cute and he's all mine!' she informed him. He gasped.

'A brother? Where'd you get him?' he asked.

There was a pause on the other end. Finally, Judy replied, 'What do you mean, where'd I get him?'

'Y'know, like where'd he come from? Where'd you get him?'

'Well… I didn't get him!' she said defensively. 'My mommy and daddy did. They'll tell you if you ask them.'

Steve sighed. 'Never mind, Judy, I'll ask Brad. Brad knows everything. And he likes explaining stuff too.'

'You're telling me. Remember the time he tried to explain to us about square roots?'

'I never did understand anything he said about that.' Steve mused. 'But that's okay, we already know what square roots are, right?'

'Duh. Trees with four flat sides.'

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'You really didn't need to come over today, Janet. It won't be much fun, I'm just baby-sitting Steve,' Brad Majors said to his girlfriend as they stood in the doorway. 'And I also need to visit Dr. Scott.'

'Oh, that's alright, darling,' Janet answered as she removed her coat. 'I just wanted to be with you.'

Brad smiled. Now would have been a good time to make out passionately if Steve hadn't come bounding around the corner then. 'Janet!' the boy cried happily, nearly sliding into the wall.

'How you doing, buddy?' Janet asked, amused.

'Okay,' Steve replied. 'Oh, but there's something I wanted to ask Brad.' He looked at his brother with wide blue eyes. 'Where do babies come from?'

Brad's heart skipped a beat. 'W-wha-?'

'Where do babies come from?'

Well, you see...' Brad fixed his glasses wearily. 'Babies… come from… toasters.'

'Brad, don't lie to him!' Janet exclaimed. She knelt down beside Steve and looked him in the face. 'Okay, Stevie, listen. When two grown-ups love eachother… like, love each other a lot, and they decide they want to have… a baby…' she faltered. 'Then, they… um… they decide to-'

'Gee, Janet!' Brad interrupted loudly. 'We should really be getting to Dr. Scott's house!'

'Oh, thank God,' Janet whispered. 'Good idea, Brad. Let's go.'

Minutes later, the three had departed and were headed for the house of Doctor Everett Scott, Brad with his extra credit project clutched in one arm, Janet hanging onto another. Both were confident that they had deluded Steve's questions, at least for now. Heh. Yeah, right.

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'Vhat are you doing?' Riff Raff looked up from his work and saw his eleven year old sister peering at him from the door of their bedroom, holding a glass of juice. He turned back to his project and answered her. 'I'm working on a communicator with a signal strong enough to send messages that will allow us to speak to creatures from as the Milky Way.'

'Vhy?' Magenta asked.

'Well, because no one has done it before. Imagine the first person to communicate with Earthlings from Transsexual, a mere fifteen-year-old!'

'Huh.' The girl settled down on her bed to watch her brother work. For ten minute, she observed him struggle. He was jotting something down in his notebook, frustrated, when something dawned on him.

'Of course,' he said, beaming. 'I know what I need.'

'Vhat?' Magenta asked.

'A sonic discombobulator!'

'Ah,' Magenta glanced around the room. 'I don't think ve own one of those.'

'No, of course we don't.' Riff Raff looked from his project, which consisted of what looked like a telephone with many additional buttons and switches, to his young sister.

'If I go out for a while,' he told her. 'You have to promise not to touch anything.'

'Okay,'

'I'm serious Magenta. Any slight interference at this stage could ruin it entirely.'

'I promise!' she exclaimed. When she finally got him out of the bedroom, she glanced curiously at her brother's machine.

'Don't you date touch it!' she heard Riff Raff yell from the hallway.

'I von't!' she cried back. Finally, the front door closed. Magenta strolled over to the communicator and began pressing random buttons.

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When the doorbell rang at Dr. Everett Scott's house, the man in question was on the phone with his teenage nephew.

'…und your mother and I 'ave been discussing ze possibility of you coming to study at Denton High if-'

'Listen, man, I'm doing fine, okay?' Eddie said. Dr. Scott heard a faint giggling on the other end. 'Columbia, stop that! Sorry, man, what?'

The doctor heard the bell. 'Eddie, hang on a minute, alright?' He put the phone down and wheeled over to the door.

'Brad! Janet! Come in, come in,' he lead them into the parlor room, all thoughts of his nephew forgotten. 'Zo, you 'ave brought your paper?'

'Yes, Dr. Scott,' replied Brad. 'I think it really- STEVE, DON'T TOUCH THAT!'

Steve quickly pulled away from an antique-looking vase which he had been fingering none too gently.

'Stevie,' Dr. Scott said to the five-year-old. 'In my office, I 'ave a bag of sweets on my desk. Go und take a few vhile I talk to your brother.' The boy happily obliged.

Once inside the office, Steve began rummaging through the papers on the cluttered desk in search of the candy. As he did so, he noticed a noice was being emitted from a phone. Picking it up, he listened.

'-giving you ten seconds, then me and Columbia are getting the-'

'Hello?'

There was a pause. 'Who is this?'

'This is Steve.'

'Um… hey, Steve. This is Eddie.'

'Dr. Scott's busy right now. Guess you'll have to wait.'

'Uh, yeah… guess I will.'

There was another pause. Then Eddie spoke again. 'Well, now, this is awkward, isn't it?'

Steve heard a female voice snicker, then say 'I heard once that everytime there's an awkward silence, a gay baby is born.'

Only then did Steve remember his early inquiries. 'Is that where babies come from? Awkward silences?'

Yet another pause took place here.

'Huh?'

'Babies come from awkward silences?

'No. No, it's just a-' Eddie at loss. 'They don't come from awkward silence.'

'Well, where do they come from?'

'Aw, man. See what did now, Columbia!' Eddie hissed to the girl with him. 'You see… Steve… babies come supermarket.' Steve heard the girl, Columbia let a fit giggles.

'Yeah, that's right,' Eddie continued. 'When a couple want a kid, they go and buy them at the supermarket.'

Steve was skeptical. 'I've been to the supermarket before and I've never seen babies on the shelves.'

'What, you don't believe me?'

'Nope.'

'Huh. Smart kid.'

That's when Dr. Scott entered. Steve quickly put down the phone.

'Steve, Janet und your brother are ready to-' the professor caught Steve's guilty glances at the phone. 'Were you speaking with Eddie?'

'Dr. Scott, where do babies come from?'

Needless to say, this was not the reply Dr. Scott had expected. 'Pardon me, Stevie?'

'Where do babies come from? Like, how are they made?'

Dr. Scott thought quickly. 'Well, um, you see… When two people want uh baby, they write a letter to a bird-type being called a stork, which then flies over the house of said people und drop a baby attached to a parachute down towards its new parents.' He sighed, hoping his rapidly conceived story would be satisfactory for the young boy.

'So… I came from a parachute?' Steve said slowly. 'From the sky?'

'Yes und yes,' Dr. Scott answered, a little too quickly. 'Und now, Stevie, we really must not keep Brad und Janet waiting.' He firmly guided the boy out of the study. Before he himself left, he picked up the phone, hissed 'Thanks a bunch, Eddie,' And slammed it down.

As he walked home with Brad and Janet, Steve thought about his questions and the answers he had received: toasters, awkward silences, supermarkets, parachutes… which, if any, was correct?

Eddie said they didn't come from awkward silences, he thought, but he also said they came from supermarkets and that's about as stupid as the time Brad ate that brownie that Ralph had put that weird stuff in and he started to dance on the-

'ARGH!' Steve's thoughts were interrupted by his brother's yell as he tripped over something and fell to the ground.

'Brad, my darling, are you alright?' Janet cried, helping him up. 'What did you trip on?'

Steve picked up the suspected object. It looked like a telephone with many added latches and buttons. Janet stared at it. 'It's a-'

'A sonic intergalactic communicator!'

Steve and Janet stared at Brad.

'Now I know this sounds crazy,' he said defensively. 'But Dr. Scott was telling me that his colleague knows a fellow whose brother goes to a hair dresser who has found reason to believe that aliens are trying to communicate with humans through strategically placed sonic intergalactic communicators.'

They blinked in unison.

'So, you think it's like…' Janet searched for the word. 'An alien phone?'

'Yes!' Brad announced triumphantly. 'We have to go back and inform Dr. Scott. Come, Janet!' He grabbed her hand and started running back from whence they came.

'But Brad! Stevie-'

'He'll be fine, leave him to guard the device!'

'Why can't we just take it with-'

Steve watched as they disappeared into the direction of Dr. Scott's house. That was when the phone rang.

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It was the big, red button, Magenta's favourite, that made the device ring. She gasped as a voice spoke from one end.

'Hello?' came a male voice that sounded younger than Magenta's.

'Um, hello,' she answered. 'Are you an Earthling?'

'Uh… I guess.'

'Ah,'

What followed was an awkward silence that one of the two had heard all too often that day, then the voice spoke again.

'Say,' the young boy said. 'Do you know where babies come from?'

Magenta cocked her eyebrow, as if the boy would be able to see her. 'You ask me if I know vhere babies come from? Vhat kind of a question is that, Earth-kid?' she questioned him.

'Well, do you know?'

'Er, vell, no,' she told him frankly. 'If you vant I could ask my brother Riff Raff. He knows everything.'

'Yeah, I guess if you-' the Earth-Boy was cut off as the communicator began sprouting fume.

Magenta would have paled if her face wasn't already paper-white. Riff would not like this. As if on cue, she heard the door open and her brother call 'What's that burning stench?'

The door flew opened and Riff Raff raced over to his invention. He grabbed his sister's juice and threw it on the flames, putting them out. He turned slowly to Magenta. 'Did you touch it?' he snapped harshly. Magenta shook her head furiously.

Riff Raff turned back to see if there was any way to salvage his now burned, wet, project. There wasn't.

'Riff?' a tentative voice asked from behind him.

'Yes, Magenta.'

'Where do babies come from?'

He spun around to face his sister. 'You want to know where babies come from?'

'Yes, you know, like how are they made?'

He cocked his eyebrow at her.