AN: So I decided I wanted to do an AU for Newsies. So here I am writing an AU…for Newsies. You will notice that I may make fun of some other AU's that I have read but it won't be serious and know that I love most AU's I come across. And if I make fun of anything else it's only for the fun of writing. As usual I own nothing of Newsies.
Catastrophe
I was putting the final touches on the TV room when I heard the door bell ring. I ran to the door and was amazed that all my friends were at the door at the same time.
"Well this is a bad sign." I said with a smile as I let my friends in for the sleepover I had been preparing for all week.
"Sid you freak out a bit and always think something bad's gunna happen when odd stuff happens." Luna said. Luna was known as the Albino to our little group of people. She was tall with slightly ginger hair and eyes that occasionally looked too big when she was in her freak out mode.
"Oh posh, you'll get over my superstition." I said with a quick hair flip to get the frizzy, dark curls out of my face.
"Since when do you say posh?" Laurel, my shortest friend who's hair color was a bit more strawberry than blond, asked.
"I don't know, but you know it sounds cool." I said with a smile.
"True story." Laurel replied with a laugh.
"Amy say something to contribute to the conversation." I said to the girl that still hid in the doorway with insanely long brown hair and a lip ring.
"Something." She said walking to the group with a smile on her face.
"Funny." I replied with a neutral tone. "Let's eat so I can inform you of the awesomeness known as Newsies." I was answered by a chorus of groans. "Don't hate it till you watch it!" I said as I ran for the kitchen where the food awaited.
I knew I was the only one who knew that Newsies was awesome in our small town in Ohio. I knew my friends would like it too if they just gave it a chance but since it was made in the 90's they think it's gunna suck, but I know that Newsies was one of Disney's most recent rockin' movies. We ate our pizza and chips and occasionally said something but we were all too hungry to care about chit chat. We had all heard the radio and TV say that there was likely to be high wind and rain but nothing to worry about. We all ran up my deadly curved stairs as carefully as we could and plopped down in front of the TV after we were all comfortable in our pj's and giant bed of blankets.
We had a little conversation about all of our different patterns. Luna had a light blue tank top and long pants that had the pattern of birds flying on them. She had a serious problem with birds. She was always drawing them on any spare piece of paper I had. Amy had a green short sleeved shirt that had a panda and her pants had a whole slew of pandas. Laurel had a plain pink short sleeved shirt and pink pants that had red lips on them. I had on a black tank top and pants that had Coca-Cola polar bears on them and took out my newsies hat that I had. It was navy blue and had a red oval with an S on the back. I got out of the heap and put the movie in.
"Prepare to fall in love." I said as I turned the lights out and started the movie.
"Definitely not with that hat though." Luna said with a laugh.
"Don't hate. By the end of this you'll wish you had one." I said with an evil smile.
Not five minutes into the previews my little sister, Sara, came running in and jumping into the pile of blankets. Her blond hair was everywhere and her Beatle pajamas were overwhelming to look at due to the neon colors.
"What cha watchin'?" She asked rolling on top of all of us like Draco from A Very Potter Musical.
"Newsies you slug. Now get off me!" I yelled as she rammed her elbow into my stomach.
"OH! I wanna watch!" She screamed finding an empty spot in the pile.
She may be fifteen but she sounded like a little kid. It was funny for a while to my friends but then they just shut up about her extremely high voice. My mom would be happy if she saw us sixteen to seventeen year olds letting Sara watch the movie with us. Of course I was the only sixteen year old in the group but that would change in a few days. I was personally annoyed but that was soon replaced with fan girl glee. I knew I was in love with Spot. The bad thing about Spot for me was they make him seem really short and I'm abnormally tall, so that puts a damper on things. Manhattan wasn't too bad on the eyes. All you have to do is watch the first five minutes and you fall in love with Jack. Amy and Luna nearly started drooling when they saw Jack for the first time. I laughed at them but then I heard a noise I never expected. It sounded like thunder but it didn't sound like thunder. I had just enough time to look out the window and see the tree falling before it hit the house.
I opened my eyes and saw darkness. I heard Sara screaming and Laurel, Amy, and Luna freaking out too. I figured it was my job to be the rational one for the moment and hold my screams till later.
"Everybody ok?" I yelled over everyone.
"NO! I tree just fell on your house!" Luna screamed.
"Calm down! We need to find a way out of this and to do that we need to find each other." I said in a calm loud voice.
It took a few minutes of scrambling around and hitting each other in the faces for all of us to grab hands. "What now?" Sara asked in my ear.
"Now we hope we see a way out of this darkness." I said quickly.
"I don't think an exit sign or light is going to just appear, Sid." Amy said quietly just before a faint glow appeared.
"What was that?" I said rubbing it in a little.
We all started to head for the light. I could feel the ground changing. It went from carpet to what felt like rocks. I kept my mouth shut about it for now. As we got closer to the light I saw a building at the end. Finally we broke through to the glow that we welcomed. I fell to the ground glad that there wasn't darkness anymore. I saw everybody else lay on the ground feeling glad that they were somewhere. We lay with our feet towards the center of the circle we formed. I decided that then was a good time to explode.
"Oh. My. God." I said quietly.
"What?" Sara asked to my left.
After that a not-so-quiet quiet scream came out of my throat. I sat up quickly and said, "A freakin' tree just fell on our house! And if you haven't noticed we ain't in Kansas no more Toto!" The others looked at me like I was crazy and then looked behind me and started to hide their giggles. I closed my eyes and started to nod my head, "There are people behind me aren't there?"
"Yeah…" Laurel said seeming to be the only one who wasn't laughing.
I turned around and nearly started to scream again. Than I thought of all the AU newsies fan fiction I had read and they all started with a catastrophe.
"You goils alright?" Jack said with a raised eyebrow. I looked at the few newsies behind him and they thought I was crazy. I recognized all of them; Blink, Mush, Racetrack, Boots, Crutchy, and Skittery.
"Not really." I said in a squeaky voice feeling my face turn red.
"Who looks stupid now? You do." Luna said through laughter making A Very Potter Sequel reference.
"One problem Lu. You're the one who's supposed to look stupid." I informed her.
"Where are we?" Amy asked to try and stop us from going off topic again.
"Yous is in New York. Where ya think ya's at?" Race said by Jack's side.
"How'd we get here?" Amy seemed confused.
"Well we sure as hell didn't fly here." I said quickly not caring about my first impression anymore since they all think I'm crazy anyway.
"Sidnie! Watch your mouth." Sara said not wanting me to curse even though she does it all the time.
"Sara. Shut up before I go all Fiona on you." I said holding my head in my hands hoping she would get the reference to our mom's Irish friend who enjoyed to curse.
"Well no need to be rude Cucukatchu." Sara said quietly.
"What?" The boys behind me asked.
"Nothing. She's fifteen." I said waving my hand.
"Do ya goils need some help?" Mush asked coming up from behind. I turned and saw he was staring at Amy. I laughed on the inside. Mush had no chance with her. Amy's heart belonged to her boyfriend and no way was a really hot newsie going to change that.
"Yeah. I have a feeling we won't be going home anytime soon." Laurel replied.
"Yous goils can come stay wit' us, but yous has gotta work and yous need new clothes." Jack said staring out our pajamas.
"I'm down with that." Luna said with nods from Laurel and Amy.
"Works but we might need some help getting the hang of everything." I said not wanting to move because my feet had fallen asleep.
The boys came up and helped everyone…except me. As they were walking away I yelled, "Don't worry about me! Crazy people don't need help!" I got up and attempted to catch up but gave up quickly. I was close enough to hear some chatter between Luna, Skittery and Boots though.
"Is ya friend really crazy?" Skittery asked.
"Nah. She's just had a rough day and needed to yell at something." Luna said trying to get rid of my status as crazy.
"She sure acts like it though." Boots said quickly.
"Eh you would be too if you had a tree fall on your house while you were in it. Just be glad she's here or we would all be crazy." Luna said laughing a little.
We finally walked into the Lodge and Jack talked to Kloppman probably about us staying here.
"First night is free." The old man said. He was nice, probably a lot nicer than most people. "I'll need ya names though, for the books." Luna started to name us off but then Kloppman said, "Short names please."
She gave a confused face and Jack explained, "Ya need newsie names."
"I'll figure it out. Ok…Sara you're Jaws." She gave me an angry look understanding the meaning of her name. "Laurel is Pearl. A shortened version of your spy name." I whispered the last part to her. "Luna you can be…um…Chick." She gave an approving smile remembering all the homework she drew little chickens on. "Amy you can be…let's see…you can be Cap. And I'll be Steps." I said proud of my newsie naming skills.
"I abject!" Luna said with an evil looking smile.
"What?" I asked confused.
"You're name is crap! I want to pick it out." She replied still looking like she was up to something.
"Fine." I said knowing I would regret giving in.
"I dub thee Nut Job." Luna said proudly.
"Now everyone's going to think I'm crazy!" I yelled at her.
"Hey, you're a good kind of crazy, Sid. Now all those annoying losers won't bother you because they'll think you're crazy." Luna said quickly.
"I hope you get smothered by a pillow." I mumbled.
After Luna explained I wasn't crazy to everyone in the room Ariel came up to me looking really confused.
"Cap? What the crap Sid?" Amy asked confused.
"It's short for Captain. I figured you'd be good with it." I said seeing her face change to understanding. Captain Man was her nick name and hey I made it short and sweet.
"Some of da boys will get ya some clothes." Jack said walking up the stairs.
We all followed realizing that no one else was downstairs. Once we reached the top of the stairs I nearly caused the rest of us to fall down after a load of clothes were thrown at my face. After the girls pushed me back up I dropped the clothes on the floor and we started to dig through them trying to find stuff to wear. I found a pair of gray pants and a dark purple shirt but I had fight Sara and Luna off for the light blue suspenders. Sara had gray pant too but a light blue shirt and red suspenders. Amy had black pants with a green shirt and gray suspenders. Laurel had dark blue pants with a maroon shirt and oddly pink suspenders. Luna had light gray pants with yellow orange looking shirt and black suspenders.
We got dressed while everyone else headed to bed. When we found some open bunks we quickly realized there were only three bunks left. We had to settle it with rock paper scissors. The first two people out had to share a bunk the next two had to share a bunk and the winner got the bed alone. I was the first out along with Sara. We were bound to kill each other. Next were Amy and Luna so by default Laurel got the bed to herself. We all attempted to get mildly comfortable in the cramped beds. We were all soon in bed but not tired.
"This may be one of the weirdest sleepovers." I said quietly getting a laugh from Amy and Luna.
That's when we all decided to try to get some sleep. It wasn't easy but sleep eventually came and my eyes closed hoping this wasn't a dream.