On the fourth Thursday of November, Bobby woke up excited for two reasons. For one, it was Thanksgiving, which meant wonderful food like turkey and ham and sweet potato casserole with marshmallows and turnip greens and rolls and mashed potatoes and gravy and green bean casserole and cranberry sauce and devilled eggs. Food at Xavier's Institute for Gifted Youngsters was always good for a variety of reasons. When there were missions, they ordered pizza or went for fast-food or had Chinese takeout; they always got good deals for being super heroes, too. Otherwise they had Darcy's cooking, which was always good. However, nearly everyone cooked a dish on Thanksgiving Day, and Bobby was a sucker for Rogue's southern recipes.
His favorite part of the grand feast had to be the dessert course, though, because that means he could pick from a vast variety of pies. Every year there was a competition to see whose pie was the best. Bobby, due to his lack of cooking skills, was one of the judges along with the Professor (because he was Headmaster) and Hank (who couldn't cook without getting hair in his pies). Bobby did cook for the main meal in a way – there was always plenty of ice in everyone's drinks. But getting to taste every pie – over twenty pies actually – had to be the best job in the world. This year Rogue was cooking a strawberry-rhubarb pie as a way to bribe him, because she knew it was his favorite; however, Darcy was cooking a blueberry pie, and he absolutely loved when she made that, which wasn't very often. Then there was Jane's apple pie, Kitty's cherry pie, Wanda's raspberry pie, Peter's coconut cream pie… the list went on to everything as traditional as pumpkin pie to something as simple as a chocolate pie to even the more typically cold pies like key lime and lemon to even a new one that Bobby had never tried before – boysenberry. The competition would be close, and he was looking forward to judging.
The second reason, though, that Bobby was so excited this morning was because it was snowing, the first snowfall of the winter season. Now Bobby would be in his element. Getting out of the X-Mansion to escape the chaos of the kitchen, Bobby took to the outdoors with the younger children to keep them entertained and out of the way of the many chefs.
For a moment, Bobby stood outside in the crisp, nippy air while snowflakes gently swirled around him. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and without even meaning to he shifted into his full ice form. Before he could even open his eyes, he was suddenly pelted with a snowball that slammed into the back of his head. Taking it in his stride with his good sense of humor, Bobby laughed and whirled around to face his opponent. "Okay, game on!"
As soon as he had turned around, another snowball had slammed into his face. The kid who had thrown it was one of his students. Bobby had an accounting degree and taught mathematics at the Institute. You think that would make him an unpopular professor, but Bobby was too good of a teacher and too funny of a guy for that to be the case. That didn't stop his students from throwing snowballs, though. The one who had hit him twice now lightly jogged away to avoid the incoming return fire. Over his shoulder, though, he called to Bobby, "Sorry I ruined your Elsa moment, Professor Bobby!"
Frozen. The bane of Bobby's existence since that faithful winter of Snow-pocalypse. Bobby had actually enjoyed that movie before it became such a meme of itself. Today, though, an unbidden idea came to him, and acting impulsively as always, he followed it through without a second thought.
"You want to see me have my Disney Princess moment? Fine. Just remember you asked for it." Using his powers, Bobby manifested an army of snowmen around him – the normal looking kind, not resembling Olaf at all. He hated that snowman. Then, inspired more by Disney's movie Fantasia where Mickey Mouse controlled the brooms, Bobby made the snowman dance and rhythmically lob snowballs around them.
Then Bobby actually started to sing. "My power flurries through the air into the ground! My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around! And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast!" While he sang, he let the snowmen do their thing while he focused more on the X-Mansion, embellishing it with artistic frost patterns and jewel shaped icicles in secure locations. He had no intention of making the school into a cold death trap, but he did want to heavily emphasize the castle-like feel to the structure. This was the beginning of the winter season, and the students deserved to have their Disney castle. Judging from how the younger students were already screaming with delight fighting the snowmen or watching Bobby's icy architecture skills, they were very much enjoying the start of their winter break before it was even fully underway.
"I'm never going back, the past is in the past!"
With that iconic line, Bobby pulled the cliché move of a magical girl transformation where, as he shifted back into his normal form, he swathed himself in snowflakes and snow-flurries until he had a fluffy dress of white snow. In comparison to his engineering skills, unfortunately, he was a pretty awful tailor. Thankfully and realistically, he still had his normal clothes underneath the snow dress, but for snow he just looked like a snow drift that came to life. It got an uproarious laugh out of the students before they continued raining down on him with snowballs, so Bobby was happy with it anyway. He wasn't finished yet; there was still the rest of the song and the grand finale.
Abruptly sudden and without mercy, Bobby increased the intensity of the snowfall, shooting snowballs from his fingertips like a frozen sprinkler head. His snowmen also increased their fever in throwing snowballs, too, and the children started being pushed back against Bobby's snowy forces. All the while, he continued to sing, "Let it go, let it go! And I'll rise like the break of dawn! Let it go, let it go! That perfect girl is gone! Here I stand in the light of day! Let the storm rage on!" Bobby paused and surveyed the damage done in this snowball fight turned into a snowball war. Evidently, he had won since all of the children were covered in snow and nearly indistinguishable from his own snowmen.
Victorious, Bobby ditched his fashion train wreck of a snow dress, but left the X-Mansion with his icy additions. "The cold never bothered me anyway!" Bobby announced before he cleared the snow off of the children to form more snowmen. Albeit these snowmen were now immobile and bigger.
Defeated, the children were soaked from the snow, shivering in their boots with drippy noses and blue lips and numb fingers and toes. "Okay, kids, let's go warm up before we eat," Bobby said with large smile, trying to herd them inside. His guidance was unnecessary as they rushed for the doors for the warmth and the food.
Happy with the events of the day, Bobby had just as great of a night with a satisfying Thanksgiving dinner. He had saved just enough room for the pie competition, and it was a great surprise to everyone when Bobby congratulated Logan as the winner – even though Logan technically cooked a peach cobbler. If anything, the only bad spot on such a perfect winter Thanksgiving Day was that Bobby had to judge two awful pies: one being lamb, kidney, and steak while the other was an English Sheppard's pie. Needless to say, Bobby left them a scathing score to discourage them from entering next year. Still, Bobby was content to enjoy a variety of other fruity, sweet, and tart pies and endure being teased by his students, co-workers, and teammates about his Elsa moment outside on a perfect snowy day.