**Standard Mice Disclaimer**
Mice is in no way associated with the Marvel Comics Group. She is merely trying to write a story and this is all she has to show for it. A noble effort. Though she would one day like to be paid for writing, please don't send her any money (send mail to urmonkeyifudo@yeahright.com on instructions to send her money). The characters of Bobby Drake, Hank McCoy, Elizabeth Braddock, Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, Ben Grimm, Forge, Val Cooper, and Moira MacTaggert belong to Marvel Comics Group. Ann "Annie" Peckenpaugh is of my own mind. Any archiving of this story that is unaware of her attention will be ily received (Read: Tikki Curse). If you e-mail her, explain your intentions to archive the story and address of your archive, she will be more than gracious and will probably do something nice for you, like bake you brownies, not to mention archiving the story. She just wants to know where she can drool over the sight of her name. If you want to e-mail her comments, do it at reese@snarkyblue.com. You'll also get some brownies out of the deal, but it's not really that great of a reward because she can't cook.
For those following the series, this takes place between parts one and two of Six Seeds.
Get the Message
By Mice
He filled out the fax sheets, taking care to put "Robert" instead of "Bobby" to sound mature. This was a serious matter that required serious names. He felt lucky in that moment that his mother hadn't named him after his great uncle, Hymen.
Bobby mostly collected his message from Hank's ongoing file on Annie, and though were still words that he didn't understand, despite not being as horrible at science most thought him to be, it even impressed him and made him that much more determined to help. He even practiced his signature to get it to the appropriate levels of swirly without being too girly.
As Bobby placed the sheets in the fax machine, he felt for the first time that he was contributing.
FROM: Xaviers Institute - Robert L. Drake
SUBJECT: Expertise Needed
MESSAGE: We here at Xaviers are always going through one crisis after the next. This time the crisis is a young woman we took in not too long ago who has had her first brush of what can go wrong by affiliating herself with the likes of us. I am sure my colleague, Dr. Henry Phillip McCoy, has informed you of Ann Peckenpaugh, whose power is to absorb all information that she accrues through an ocular, touch sensory, audible, olfactory, and even taste process. We have faith that she will be able to become a valuable member of our team once fully trained in this power that has seemingly unlimited potential.
Ms. Peckenpaugh recently had an unscheduled hysterectomy during a planned surgery to repair cartilage around her knee joint. We are currently pursuing the attending doctor and intend to deal with it accordingly. What remains unsolved is how to give this young woman her reproductive system back, which is why we are consulting your scientific expertise. If you can offer any suggestions as to rebuilding a uterus and ovaries from scratch, we would greatly appreciate it. As would Ms. Peckenpaugh, as our Shi'ar technology in such fields is very much down, thanks to a certain unnamed third generation feathered playboy in his experiment that included a lime, a coconut, and an array of alcoholic substances in an effort to shake them all up.
Thank You,
Robert L. Drake
-2-
TO: Reed Richards
Reed took a sip from his coffee, never tearing his eyes away from his newspaper. He felt proud to live in New York, where the culture and real newspaper was. He nudged his glasses up and saw that he had an incoming fax. He let his hand drop the newspaper and picked up the fax. He looked at it for a long time, the words making sense, while not.
"Sue?"
No answer.
"Sue, honey, are you there?"
Johnny Storm walked in to see Reed struggling with the fax. "Reed?"
"Johnny, do you know where my wife is?"
"She's gone out for a bagel, why, what's up?"
Reed shook his head. "I got this fax from Xaviers...from a Robert L. Drake...do I know who he is?"
Johnny tried to cover his snicker with his hand. ""Robert"? What, does he think that just because he turned twenty-eight that he gets to have the mature name?" Johnny's face darkened. "We had a deal. We were going to talk before going mature with our names. We shook on it."
"So you know this man?"
"I spat on my hand and shook his spit covered hand!" Johnny shuddered.
"Johnny?"
"John," he replied indignantly. "You have to call me John, now."
Reed ignored it. "Who is this man?"
"That's Iceman."
It was Reed's turn to snicker. "No. There are polysyllabic words in here, it can't be." He looked at the paper once more. "There's not one "cowabunga" in this fax!"
Johnny--sorry, John Storm squinted. "I know Bobby--sorry, Robert can be immature at times, but I doubt that he--"
Reed shook his head slowly. "I think it was when Dr. McCoy had him as his lab assistant for a week. I'd get these faxes and at the bottom would be this signature of, "This has been a Bobby Drake fax. Cowabunga!" And wasn't he the one who kept pestering the band at my wedding to play "Hungry Like the Wolf"?"
"He would have gotten away with it, too, if Ben hadn't told the band ahead of time not to accept requests from those under thirty." John frowned. Though he disagreed with Robert's request, he wanted to hear "A View to a Kill". He thought it was more appropriate.
"Well, it doesn't matter. I think this is for Sue. There's a lot of information in here that I think she knows far more about than I. I'm just going to go put this where she can find it."
-3-
TO: Forge
Forge came into the room whistling a happy tune. He saw the fax in the machine and withdrew it happily.
He scanned the message, returned the fax to the machine, and walked out whistling as if nothing had ever happened.
-4-
TO: Moira MacTaggert
Moira MacTaggert was frustrated. She had been in front of the computer for almost seven hours straight due to someone installing Kazaa on a PC while running America Online at the same time. "What kinna idiot would ever do that to a PC? And who would be dumb enough to use AOL here in Scotland?" Moira shook her head. She knew she wasn't going to get the zany walk in answer that so many sitcoms had promised.
That's when she heard her fax machine start up. Moira raced, feverish from the lack of human contact. "Come on, ye damned piece o'crap, faster!" She eagerly grabbed up the fax and read every line before collapsing on the floor, laughing. "Thank ye, Drake, I needed that!"
-5-
"Bobby?"
Bobby turned from the computer and saw Elizabeth Braddock standing behind him with a small stack of papers in her hand. "Hey, Betsy."
"Were you using the fax machine?"
Bobby nodded, then pointed at the computer screen. "Did you know that the ending in Pretty in Pink wasn't the original?"
"You received these back." Elizabeth flipped through the papers. "Reed Richards says that Sue will get back to you after she finds a decent everything bagel. Johnny Storm--wait, it says John Storm, is officially dissolving your friendship because you have broken your contract of spit and wants his Toto CD back. It's all accompanied by a very violent and semi-pornographic doodle."
"Did you know that the high school they filmed at was the same one they shot Grease at?"
"And Moira sends a thank you for making her day. There's also something here from Val Cooper wondering what on earth you did to Forge. Did you do something to Forge, Bobby?"
"What? No." He pointed at the screen once again. "And Andrew McCarthy was wearing a wig in the re-shot scene."
"There's some others in here. I'll let you read them when you're not so busy." She sat the stack next to the mouse, but not before catching something on the screen. "Wait a minute, the original ending had Andie ending up with Duckie? The geek?"
Bobby pouted. "It was the better ending."