"Do any of ye… smell that?" Rahne Sinclair asked her fellow teammates, sniffing the air.

"Smell what? What am I supposed to be smelling, amiga?" Roberto 'Sunspot' Da Costa queried as he walked beside the fiery Amara, clinging to her arm in order to protect himself from the dark.

"I thought ye would know the scent well, Roberto- somethin's aflame," the Scottish mutant said.

"You don't think anything… bad's happened at the campsite, do you?" Amara asked worriedly. Her worry wasn't unfounded. After all… a catastrophe wouldn't be surprising... or the first.

"Well since we don't see anyone screaming or running for their lives, everything should be-"

"OUTTA MY WAY!" Bobby Drake screeched at the top of his lungs as he iced a path before him, sliding past the trio with a look of pure terror on his face. "I'M TOO YOUNG TO DIE!"

"You spoke too soon," Roberto commented dryly as Sam rocketed past, screaming bloody murder.

"What's the holy show about?" Rahne asked, grabbing Jubilee's arm as she whizzed past, sending off a miniature fireworks show.

"The what?" Jubilee demanded, panic clear in her eyes as she tried to yank her arm free.

"You know? The spectacle? The hullabaloo? Is it another Apocalypse?" Rahne asked.

"It's even worse!" shrieked Jubilee, tearing her arm free from Rahne's grasp and stumbling past them. "Kitty's gotten her hands on all the hot dogs!"

"Well I don't see-"

"Hey guys!" Kitty called, interrupting Amara as she ran towards them, waving a skewer with a pierced hot dog on its other end. "Anyone up for some roasted hot dogs by the-"

"SAVE YOURSELVES!" Ray shrieked as he bolted past them, curses streaming from his mouth. "FUCKING RUN FOR IT!"

The three of them didn't need another warning; they did a one-eighty and were hot on Ray's heels. None of them felt like spending the rest of the Spring Break trip puking out their innards. Even Rahne, who could understandably chow down on dog food, transformed into a wolf and hightailed it out of there, following Bobby's ice trail and howling at the offense done to her olfactory system, while Roberto let out a string of Portuguese expletives and violently seized Amara's arm, diving for cover behind a shrub and ignoring her protests about how she was royalty, and what did he think he was doing, trying to pull her arm off?

"Aquiete, Amara!" he hissed, pulling her behind the safety and shelter of the bush. "Unless you want double servings of salmonella sausage!"

Bamf. Nightcrawler had teleported onto a tree bough safely above Kitty's reach, eyes widening with horror once he saw what she held in her hands.

"Jamie!" he wailed. "I thought I told you to guard the food supplies while the rest of us were gone!" Multiple Boy was sitting by the fireside… well, actually, several Jamies were hunched in a circle around the bonfire, each holding a skewer loaded with marshmallows.

"Kurt! He did a good job- no bears got into the food! So I rewarded him with some… marshmallows," Kitty finished lamely, suddenly realizing what a bad idea that had been. "But hey! Kurt- are you like, hungry yet? Because I totally cooked all the hot dogs while everyone was out. Save everyone the trouble, ya know?"

"This is a disaster!" Kurt cried out, throwing his fuzzy hands in the air. "I'm out of here- at least a burger bomb won't kill me!" (No doubt Scott would've argued, if he'd been present.) There was another bamf, and he was gone.

"Where is Nightcrawler headed off to?" Beast asked, lumbering into the clearing. He sniffed the air. "And what is that sm- Oh." The look of mild curiosity on his face was instantly replaced by one of sheer terror.

"Mr. McCoy!" Kitty said with a wide smile. "Hot dog?" She had placed it on a paper plate (they were going to bring Styrofoam, but Rahne had been on an environmentally friendly warpath lately, raving something about her "fellow animals.")

"Erm… well… I don't… um… Wait." Beast squinted his eyes in order to more closely scrutinize the evil sausage in Kitty's possession. "It's… not burnt."

"Of course not. Why would it be?" Kitty asked, thoroughly puzzled. "Here, Mr. McCoy."

"NO!" Roberto bellowed, leaping up from the bushes just as Beast reached to take the hot dog. "Mr. McCoy- don't do it!"

"Roberto! What are you doing?" Amara hissed, trying to tug him back down again. "Do you have a total disregard for your life?"

He looked back down at her and heatedly whispered in reply, "There are two people legally licensed to drive the rest of us back home. If Mr. McCoy is hospitalized… the only person left to drive us back is… Kitty!"

"Ack!" Amara yelped and bolted up just like Roberto had to shout, "Mr. McCoy! Don't! This is a bad idea!"

But it was too late.

"Erm," Beast glanced from his students in the foliage to the exquisite hot dog on his plate and back again. Everything logical in him was screaming to drop the dog! But at the same time… it actually smelled… good, entirely unlike anything Kitty had concocted before. Like hickory smoke and sizzling meat just off the grill. His stomach rumbled.

"I suppose… one tiny bite wouldn't hurt."

"No! We're doomed! Meu Deus!" Roberto sank to the ground in defeat, while Amara looked on in petrified horror, unable to tear her eyes away from the gruesome scene. Forget Twin Peaks. Forget The Shining. This was about twenty times worse.

It was as if everything was in slow motion: Beast raising the sausage to his mouth, the sound of Roberto's wail of despair, the pounding of her heart. And then… and then…

Clunk.

Beast's face was frozen in one of shock- one that would've been hilarious had the implications been so terrible. One of his blue eyelids twitched.

"Eyyaaaagh!" he shrieked, the hot dog falling to the dirt with a dull clunk. "My feef!"

"Your what?" Kitty asked crossly, picking up the hot dog. "Mr. McCoy, you just like, wasted a hot dog! Rahne's so going to kill you!"

"Agh! My feef! I fink it cracked my feef!"

"At least this time it'll only require a trip to the dentist instead of the ER?" Amara asked Roberto semi-hopefully, grimacing as Beast clutched at his jaw and roared in agony and several sugared-up Jamies pelted gooey marshmallows at Kitty.

"…"

He knew he should have stayed home.

Honestly, this style of writing is one I'm not accustomed to. It's basically the polar opposite of the pieces I usually do (read: dark, gritty, occasionally insane), but it was nice to do something absolutely ridiculous for a change.

Obrigado!