Callisto bounded down the stairs early one morning so fast that she rammed her shoulder into the wall at the bottom. She glared at Xena as she passed by the living room to the kitchen for breakfast.
Xena ignored Callisto, focused on polishing her sword. Five minutes later she heard what sounded like someone else tumbling down the stairs. She ignored that as well.
Tigra entered, spotting Xena on the couch and Callisto by the fridge. "We the only ones up?" she asked. Xena nodded. "Good, I hate when the kitchen's crowded in the morning and everyone's eating my cereal."
"You can expect more company soon, with the noisy way you two came down the stairs," Xena commented as Tigra joined Callisto in the kitchen.
Sure enough, more people actually dragged their lazy butts out of bed, even if just to see if someone was lying dead at the bottom of the stairs. Soon the kitchen was swamped with people trying to scrounge up some breakfast.
"Excuse me," Mattie said to get Tataka's attention. Tataka seemed to not hear her and continued her conversation with Hope.
"Excuse me!" Mattie said louder, tapping Tataka on the shoulder. Tataka just shrugged her off.
"You shall heed my warning!" Mattie shouted, pulling Tataka's braided hair. Then she shrank under the killer glare that was turned on her.
"Uh, your waffles are burning..." Mattie warned.
Tataka quickly popped the blackened waffles from the toaster, burned her fingers a little while transferring them to a plate, and turned back to Mattie.
"My waffles didn't burn," she said. "Yours did."
Tataka shoved the plate into the other woman's hand, snatching Mattie's bowl of Cocoa Puffs for herself. Mattie glared but didn't want to suffer the wrath of Tataka, so she simply set the burnt waffles on the counter and got more Cocoa Puffs.
"Is it just me," Rogue began, not talking to anyone in particular, "or does it seem less crowded in here than usual?"
"Well, none of the big, giant men are up yet," Sunny replied, pulling the stool next to Rogue out.
Rogue stuffed her face with a forkful of pancakes, then said, "Hm, you're right, sugar." Sunny casually passed the sugar to Rogue.
"What, I didn't ask for this," Rogue said, shoving the small container aside. "You think I'm gonna put sugar on my pancakes?"
Sunny shrugged. Storm sat on the other side of Rogue, grabbing the sugar and sprinkling some on her pancakes. Rogue stared at her for a moment. Storm pretended like she didn't notice, but as soon as Rogue looked away she fixed her hair self-consciously.
"It is kinda weird though, don't ya think?" Rogue continued. "All the dudes still in bed? Usually atleast Hercules is up for his morning work out, or Iolaus II making waffles for everyone."
Storm looked up from her sugar covered blueberry pancakes. "It is odd. I have not seen any of them besides Mephistopheles."
"And he hardly counts," Rogue snickered.
"Men are just lazy," Sunny said.
The flow of movement around the kitchen paused for a moment when everyone heard what sounded like yet another person falling harshly down the stairs.
Gabrielle stumbled into the living room. "Aw man!" she said when she saw Xena on the couch. "No matter how hard I try I can't get down here before you."
"Gabrielle, you can't even get down here before Mephistopheles, and he's a lazy dude," Xena responded.
Mephistopheles was oblivious to people talking about him as he fumbled with the TV remote in one hand and held a spoon above a bowl of Apple Jacks balanced dangerously on one knee in the other.
Xena looked at Gabrielle. "Wait, did you actually fall down the stairs for real?"
"Uh, yeah." Gabrielle reached up to touch her forehead, where a bruise was already forming.
Xena didn't know how to respond to that so she shooed Gabrielle away to the kitchen and went back to polishing her sword.
Trance bumped into Gabrielle on her way to the living room and sloshed some of the milk out of her bowl of Mini Wheats. She stared at it soaking into the carpet for a minute, then continued on to the chair in the living room. Zee came in behind her and sat next to Mephistopheles on the big couch.
"You know, that might work if you turn the TV on first," Zee suggested, gesturing to the remote.
"That's what I'm trying to do," Mephistopheles told her.
"It's the button at the top," Zee said. "Don't do what you did last time."
"Yeah, yeah, I muted it first," Mephistopheles said, then pushed the On button.
"Apparently not," Zee said when the TV came on so loud that it startled Trance and made her spill her Mini Wheats all over herself.
Mephistopheles laughed at her, then pointed to his own cereal bowl balanced on his knee. "Ha! Perfect balance." Trance simply climbed over the back of the couch to get more cereal.
"Turn that TV down, will you!" Rogue complained.
"Has anyone seen Jarem?" Trance asked everyone in the kitchen, in search of her friend.
"Thankfully, no," Hope answered. "Has anyone seen my dad?"
The room became full of shaking heads.
"Where is everyone?" Tigra asked. Nobody answered her, and the subject was dropped. Until two hours later when there was no change.
Rogue burst into the classroom where Zee was trying to play Spyro on the playstation.
"You seen Gambit lately?" Rogue asked, blocking Zee's view of the game.
"No," Zee replied. "Move, you'll make me run off a cliff."
"That's all you ever do," Rogue muttered.
"Meeting in the kitchen!" came Storm's voice. "Meeting!"
Rogue dragged Zee away from the game.
"Meeting, now!" Storm announced again because not everyone was coming. "And can someone turn that TV down?"
"Does anyone have like, a hammer to hit the table with, get everyones attention?" Mattie suggested.
The Executioner swung her axe through the air before anyone could stop her. It sliced into the counter with a loud crack of wood, where it stuck. Everyone came running in to see what the noise was.
"Well, that worked," Mattie mumbled.
"Some of us went to wake up our..." Storm was interrupted by Callisto.
"Where'd these burnt waffles come from?"
"They've been there," Rogue answered. "Now pay attention, Callisto."
"As I was saying," Storm continued, raising her voice over the blaring TV, "we went to wake up our friends and found that all of the men and Lara are gone!"
Will they figure out what happened to the others? Will anyone ever turn that blasted TV down? And what will become of the burnt waffles? Find out in the next chapter! ...Or will you?
