Aha! (Jumps off screen) Ho! (Jumps back on screen)
Sorry, I've been wanting to do that since I watched Conan do it.
This one is slightly different than anything I've ever seen on the Newsies section of FF.Net...and I'm not sure you'll like it, I just thought it was different.
Disclaimer I don't own Newsies, yada-yada-yada, and no soup for you.
A series of Impossible events Chapter 1
Pickles sat down hard on the pavement and threw the nearest object she could find in her frustration...but, unfortunately, that object was her shoe that had come off when she sat down.
"AW! Crap!" She chased after the shoe, stuggling to put it back on and nearly being run over by several buggies in the process, before returning to her papers still residing on the pavement. "My hair looks REALLY bad..." She mused to herself, looking at her reflection in the puddle that had managed to get three of her papers wet.
An Asian boy crept up behind her with a maniacal grin, finally poking her hard in the sides. The resulting chaos was quite satisfactory.
"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!" Pickles jumped two feet in the air before practically landing in Swifty's arms, and then smaking him as hard as she could with her hat. "You'se is EVIL!"
"Aw, c'mon Pickles, don't be soah, I tought you'd be glad ta see me, ya know, us bein' friends and all..."
"You give me yoah patetic excuses for puppy eyes and I's gonna kill ya and spit on yoah grave." Pickles gave Swifty a glare that could curdle milk.
"What's wrong?" Swifty asked, after making sure he was far enough away so that Pickles couldn't kick him in the teeth.
"I can sell worth nothin'. And guess why?" Swifty assumed it was a hypotetical question and didn't respond. "Because I couldn't lie ta save me life! Dat's why!" Pickles grabbed a paper and flipped to the middle. "OK, right heah, it says 'Government officials's debate goes unresolved' I said, 'Pulitzer and Mayor's Fist-a-cuff ends in a draw'. Tell me, is dere anytin' wron' wid dat?"
Swifty took her hat off her her head, twirling it on his index finger. "It's poifect, why's d'ja ask?"
"BA'CAUSE IT DIN'T WOIK, DAT'S WHY, YA NUMBSKULL!" Pickles shouted into his ear, grabbing her hat back and shoving it down on her head so that only her ears and tips of her short hair stuck out.
Swifty stuck his finger in the injured ear and twisted it back and forth several times. "No kneed ta shout, I's right heah, and, I can heah ya jus' fine."
"You'se insufferable."
"Whea'd you heah dat big woid?"
Pickles picked up her last five papers, and stood up. "Specs,"
"Well, dat would explain it. But, it's not my fault dat ya can't sell..." Swifty stopped to catch the same shoe that Pickles had flung at him in her frustration. "But maybe ya jus' kneed a liddle help?"
"MAYBE?"
Swifty decided to ignore the question...if it really WAS a question, "Let me do it foah ya. Ahem. PULITZAH AND HOIST'S FIGHT FOAH RIGHTS TA NEWSPAPAH ENDS IN DRAW!"
Two older men walked up and took a paper from Swifty, making Pickles fume. Swifty gave the penny and nickel to Pickles and then tossed the three wet papers on top of the nearest drunk...who happened to be less than four feet away.
"Wheah's Itey? I haven't seen him oal day."
"Yeah, me neithah, but, he can't seem ta get enougha Irvin' hoall dese days." Pickles paused for mock dramatic effect. "Dough I can't IMAGINE why."
"Don't bug da poah kid, he's sweet on da goil." Swifty shuffled his feet as they moved through the crowd to Irving Hall.
"SWEET on 'er? Da boy's decapitated. I tink, poisonally, dat any day now he's gonna come in wid blood oal ovah hisself and when we, being his best friends, looney though we are, ask why he's dyin' he's gonna say, 'She asked foah me heart, so I gave it ta her'." She finished the sentence with a high-pitched melodramatic voice.
Swifty roared with laughter. "Da scariest paht a dat was you sounded jus' like 'im."
"Yeah, don't tell dat ta him dough."
"Heya, Pickles?"
"Yeah, what is it, Swifty?" Pickles tried to scratch a spot in the middle of her back and started turning in circles.
"Do youse remembah da day dat we foist met?" Swifty stopped Pickles from spinning and started walking her in the direction of a small Italian restaurant that they both knew.
"Of coahs I do! Whatcha tink I am? Stupid?" Pickles gladly followed Swifty. She had a bundle of lunch money and the appetite of an elephant, but stopped in mid-step. "Don't answer dat!"
She remembered quite a bit back before then, too...
"So, what's the 'Family Meeting' about?" Emily flopped down on the couch in the family library and her mother smiled, but rather seriously. Em wasn't worried; her mother could pull off quite a few strange combinations when it came to smiles.
"Well, we're moving," Father nodded, also looking very serious.
Em bounced up, now she was worried, or excited, she really couldn't tell which, yet. "Where? Tanzania? Did you take the job there?"
Her mother made this curious 'don't go there' noise in her throat and then coughed.
"Waaaiiiittt, we're not going back to Watford YET, are we?" Em had a few friends there, but that in-the-middle-of-a-black-death-void little town was not the place she most wanted to be.
"Nooooo, not quite, we're moving to New York City," Her Father announced with a flourish.
Something was horribly wrong. She was never going to get back to Africa if things played out this way, but her dad's office didn't even have a stationing in New York, Washington DC, yeah, sure, but there was nothing even close to New York. Em said as much.
"Well, we're not going because of your Father's job; he's taking a year off, sort of..." Mother was looking slightly uncomfortable and curiously like she didn't know that much, or didn't want to tell.
"What, do you mean, exactly, sort of?" Annie, Em's older sister asked. Her two little brothers had not yet said a word and were just staring at their parents in disbelief.
"Well, there's this...Kurt?" Her mother gave her father the cue...and off he was.
"You see, there's this continuum rip..."
There it was, real as life, and yet, so incredibly 'StarTrek'. They were going to spend a year, how could she even think of it, back in time. 'Annie needs a year off before going to West Point' was one of the reasons, but nobody questioned their sanity, though perhaps that was because the whole sibling tribe was 'too much horrified to speak...'
The group of them met later in Annie's room, Gus sitting on Em, who was trying to dislodge him, and Christian sitting silently on Em's feet. Annie was pacing like a lunatic and wringing her hands, looking for something to say.
"ALRIGHT!" She snapped, finally, causing her siblings to jump a few feet in the air. "Our parents are NOT crazy..."
"We've lived with them for forever, Anne, how could you deny our parent's being completely insane?"
"Shut up, Em, I'm talking straight-jackets and padded-cells crazy."
"Duh!" Em ducked the punch sent her way by her sister, and letting it catch Gus slightly in the nose.
Annie grabbed Em by the front of the shirt, leaving Gus to whine over his sore nose. "Listen Em, I have to go to West Point and I can't be thrown out because my parent's are totally insane. I think I'm about to loose it. You've always got ideas, who knows, even your stupid sarcastic suggestions could work, I just need SOMETHING, for heaven's sake!"
Trying to calm Annie, Em removed her shirt from Annie's hands and picked up the tabloid that she had left on Annie's dresser. "Weird things happen everyday. Just go along, and chill out."
Em did get a black eye from that venture, and Christian kept asking where "Up Yours" was, but they were moving, whether Anne Wheeler liked it or not.
Aha! So, now you see, the first part of my 'different' scheme was to have my whole family, the bunch of them are weirder than hell...and several cousin's show up along the way. The worst parts are yet to COME! AHAHAHAAHAH! (clears throat) well, read on.
