Author's Notes: I do not own the characters of G.I. Joe or X-Men Evolution! They are the sole, respective property of Hasbro and Marvel Comics. The characters from the Justice League, the Teen Titans, the Titans East, and Alfred are all the respective properties of DC comics. The universe of the Misfit and all characters including Althea, Blind Master, Sergeant Snuffles, Lina, Xi, Lance's "woobie", B.A's coffee and Trinity are all property of gifted writer, Red Witch! Dinosaucers is owned by Coca-Cola Entertainment and DiC Studios Incorporated. I do own the OC characters, Justin (aka Whitelighter) and the Dinosaucers Struthio, Raptor, Compy, Plateo, and Montacera! I have credited everyone and their respective creations, so please for the love of God, don't sue me! Anyway, now that it's Friday, I was reading a cute one-shot by an author named "Splinter" who writes great Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan-fiction, and there was one fanfic about Michelangelo as a kid titled "What Have I Learned" and it actually got me thinking if in the Misfit-verse…
What Has Pietro Learned
"All right, Pietro, I have decided a very special job for your therapy, made especially for you," the G.I. Joe resident psychiatrist named Psyche-Out said to the speedster Misfit teenager. Pietro and all the other Misfits were sitting on chairs in a circle in Psyche-Out's office as a part of their weekly team-therapy times, and all of them were dressed in their civilian clothes. Pietro gave the Joe a very baleful look.
"Am I being punished for something?" Pietro asked with a bit of suspicion.
"Yes," Psyche-Out replied easily with a straight face before continuing, "But it's nothing bad. It's just some of the handlers along with a few of your teammates feel that a lot of times when they ask you to remember a tidbit of information that's important, it really seems to…as they say, come in one ear or out the other."
"Must be the big air pocket where his brain should be," grumbled Xi, pouting as he crossed his arms, "Or the fact that maybe we should try sticking in information into one of his other body cavities."
"Or the fact that he has an attention span of a gnat, yo," chipped in Todd sourly.
"You two are still sore about the superglue I put on your training wooden bokken swords, aren't you?" Pietro chortled.
"You're just lucky Low Light and Spirit stopped us from shaving all your hair off when we had the chance, yo," Toad shot back, steaming, and Psyche-Out decided to intervene before the therapy session would break out into another riot (he just had his office rebuilt after the brutal argument and explosions they had last time over the "musical chairs" bonding-exercise). The adult then handed the mutant teenager a slim, leather-bound book the size of a diary.
The Joe shrink then jumped in gracefully, "So, what I'm proposing is a little writing exercise. This is a journal for you to list in anything important that you need to learn or need to remember. Since most neurologists agree that writing down tidbits of information makes it more tangible and easier to remember, I figured this exercise may do you a world of good. What I want you to do is this: for each time you feel you have learned something and you feel that it is an important life lesson for you to acknowledge, put it down in writing in the journal and write 'I have learned…' along with the lesson. This way, whenever you come across something important, having it in this journal will help you remember along with having a nice little reference to look back on when you're bored."
"So in other words, every time he learns something, he needs to write it down?" Lance remarked incredulously, blinking before turning to his teammates and saying, "Does anyone else see the joke in this or is it just me?"
"Psyche-Out, let me remind you that this is my brother we're talking about," Wanda commented in a deadpanned tone, "You honestly think he's going to take this writing exercise seriously? You'll be lucky if he even cracks that journal open."
Pietro then stuck out his tongue at his sister before he got a very vindictive smile dancing across his face. He then opened the journal Psyche-Out gave him and grabbed a pen from the psychiatrist's desk before he wrote, reciting out loud for everyone to hear, "Oh really, Sis? Well, let me show you how wrong you are! I'm writing right now: 'I have learned that my Wanda has a more boring love life than Cyclops, especially since she doesn't admit that she has a crush on Craig Starr of the Superstars and that she would like to do a personal "duet" with him one of these days as she confessed recently in her diary -'!"
"DIE!" Wanda screamed as she tackled Pietro and began strangling him, all the meanwhile screaming loudly enough to overshadow Pietro's yelps of pain, "I knew someone was reading my diary! I just knew it! Stand still and take it like a man, you jerk!"
"Just be glad you weren't around when Pietro scanned a copy of that revealing entry and sent it via e-mail to the Superstars," Quinn remarked loudly for Wanda to hear before she added with fake apologetics, "Oops, did I accidentally let that slip?"
"You blabbermouth!" Pietro yelped, his face turning white.
"YOU DID WHAT?" If anything, Wanda now got even angrier, her face flushed to a shining ruby red color as a blue vein popped out of her forehead. Pietro gulped before he tried to make a run for it, but a simple hex from the Scarlet Witch kept him firmly rooted to the floor. Which left him completely at his sister's mercy as Psyche-Out's office rang with shrill screams of pain from Quicksilver.
Wham! Wham! Wham!
"Die, die, die, die, die!" Wanda kept hollering as Pietro was vainly trying to shield himself from the chair she kept hammering him with, with Lance and Althea trying to stop her from committing homicide.
"Shouldn't we do something?" Blob asked no one in particular.
"We are. We're taking pictures of this, and I know for a fact that at least Jean, Rogue, and Scott Summer will pay good money for a set of five," Brittany grinned as she kept focusing her digital camera on the carnage that was now actually starting to turn quite bloody, "Oooh, now that's a creative way to use an extension cord! He's already turning blue!"
"I'll call Lifeline and have him ready a bed in the intensive care unit," sighed Lina.
---
The following morning, over at Misfit Manor…
"Pietro, will you quit hogging the bathroom?" Wanda hollered as she stood in the relatively cold hallway in her bathrobe and slippers, holding a change of clothes and ready to enjoy a trip to the mall with Cover Girl, Lina, and Althea, "I need to change!"
"You can wait until I'm ready," Pietro said rather flippantly and airily as he continued to painstakingly floss his teeth, relishing the fact that he was taking more time than necessary. Wanda, not surprisingly, wasn't satisfied enough with that answer.
"Will you let me in, please?" she yelled, "Pietro, I have to change! I only need five minutes tops to put on my clothes and put on some make-up! All my stuff in the bathroom! Pietro, I'm not kidding! I need the bathroom now! I can't go out like this with morning hair and looking like I just got out of bed! I look hideous right now!"
"And how is that compared to how you normally look?" Pietro chortled as he began to deliberately and slowly brush his teeth, enjoying every minute of Scarlet Witch's plight.
That proved to be absolutely the wrong thing Pietro could ever say in this case.
Ka-shaaack!
Pietro heard too late the hex Wanda cast on the door as it tore of its hinges and started to topple inwards, heading on top of the albino Misfit and ready to crush him.
"Oh no!" blurted out the albino meekly before he could run…
WHAM!
"Thank you, Pietro," Wanda shot back with fake sweetness as she stomped right into the bathroom and brutally stood on the door, squishing her dazed brother underneath it while she began to apply her make-up and brushing her hair.
"Ow…I can taste blood…" Pietro groaned underneath the wooden slab that was compressing him rather painfully to the tiled floor.
Once Wanda left, fully changed, and he managed to extract himself from the bathroom, Pietro managed to fight the pounding agony in his head as he finally went his room and wrote down with extreme annoyance in the learning journal Psyche-Out gave him:
I have learned that life would be better if I was an only child.
---
It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, and it was a perfect time to vegetate on the couch with a good movie. The sky was calm, and there were no threats from Cobra anywhere in the world for once (although that may have had been related to something Trinity did what they "accidentally" changed all the encrypted passwords of the computers affiliated with the Cobra network to "Misfits Rule" on the account that though Mindbender may be able to guess it, but he and the Cobra soldiers would never be able to type it). Training was done, the chores were done, and Pietro managed to finish his homework early (and Lance would never find out that Quicksilver copied off him). Excited, Pietro decided to rush over to the entertainment center in the living room with the latest sequel of "Bloody Beach House" horror franchise he ordered from Amazon, with this flick being thirty-percent more guts, gore, and girls-in-bikini goodness. Unfortunately, before the speedster could even pop in the tape in the VCR, Blob gently picked up Pietro by the scruff of his neck before tossing him carefully on the couch.
"Sorry, Pietro, me and Lina have the entertainment center tonight," Fred grinned as he held up a bag from the Blockbuster video-rental store. Pietro's jaw dropped in horror, especially since he was so close to seeing the movie he had been waiting a week for to ship to him.
"WHAT?" Pietro screeched, "No fair!"
"Read it and weep, Quicksilver," grinned the Texan teenager as he held up a timetable printed on a piece of paper, and to Pietro's horror, he saw that Blob was telling the truth. Directly in the slot of today at this very time were Fred and Lina's names, plainly showing their reservation for the VCR. Ever since the night when the handlers had to endure the movie wars (and when they managed to get a new VCR and DVD player along with replacing all the first-floor windows), the G.I. Joe adults laid down the law to the Misfits, saying that in order for anyone to use the TV, they would have to reserve and schedule their times needed with the entertainment centers in a fair and reasonable manner so that everyone would get a chance to watch what they wanted, thus avoiding any fights, arguments, explosions, and severe contusions in the process. And right now, Fred and Lina were rightfully slotted for use of the VCR.
Pietro was less than pleased.
"But I want to watch my movie!" whined Pietro, already beginning to throw a temper tantrum. Blob shrugged easily, hardly caring, as he opened the cassette case.
"What movie did you rent this time, Fred?" Lina asked, smiling as she comfortably snuggled into the couch with two bottles of mineral water and a gigantic bowl of popcorn, steaming slightly.
"The Maltese Falcon, a classic! And though I've never watched it, Roadblock says it's a good one!" Fred grinned as he popped the cassette into the VCR. Pietro was still sulking, and the fact that they were watching a movie he did not want to see was putting off the speedster rather irritably. Lina and Fred just ignored the speedster darkly muttering under his breath with his arms crossed over his chest, brood
"This isn't fair!" he complained, "'The Maltese Falcon'? Boooooorrrrrrrriinnnnngggg! Why can't we watch something other than some crappy movie from the Fifties? C'mon, I wanna watch 'Bloody Beach House – Girls' Night Out Part Seventeen'!"
"Fair's fair, Pietro. Me and Lina reserved this time on the schedule, and I decided to get 'The Maltese Falcon' so quit complaining and watch like a normal person," Blob commented without the slightest shred of remorse or sympathy as he crunched on some popcorn as the introduction credits began to roll.
After a few minutes into the film, the silver-haired Misfit was still in a funk.
"Haven't we seen this movie before?" Pietro piped up, bored already out of his mind.
"No, now shush!" Lina snapped a bit as she got into the beginning, "The movie's starting!"
Yet Pietro still had to open his big mouth.
"Whaddya mean we've never seen this movie before! Of course we've seen it before! It's the movie where the statute turns out to be a fake in the end!"
Fred and Lina both twitched agitatedly at the spoiler before they both glared at the albino mutant.
Later that night, Pietro managed to write in the journal while sporting a white, gauze bandage around his temples and forehead:
I have learned that a video cassette can cause a severe concussion, especially if hurled at my head at incredible velocities.
---
It was a clear weekday, and the other Misfits had just gotten out of math class with Spirit. However, there were still plenty of chores to do back at the Misfit Manor, a daily ritual for the mutants that came as a mere small price for some semblance of a family. And there was a lot to do, including housework, laundry, yard maintenance, and babysitting Claudius and Barney in their room to make sure that they didn't into mischief. And Pietro was the unlucky one to get chosen for the last task…
"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" Pietro yelped as Beak kept giggling while whacking the speedster repeatedly in the head with his wiffle bat before he complained, whining, "Why do I have to baby-sit them? Can't someone else do it? Why isn't Alfred here to watch Claudie and Beak?"
"Because Alfred is over at the Institute to help out with the X-Men," Althea said with a touch of irritation as she emerged in view of the doorway with the running vacuum, "And frankly, this is the only job where you haven't been assigned to yet that leads to disaster, something breaking, and/or you slacking off. So quit griping and deal with it!"
"Bossy rhymes-with-rich," muttered Pietro under his breath as Claudius and Beak started whining and attached themselves firmly to his leg. Pietro sighed as he looked around for something to entertain the babies. As much as he loved the babies like his own brothers, Pietro could have said with certainty that he would have preferred any other chore as opposed to watching, entertaining and monitoring diaper-duty of two mischievous mutant toddlers.
"Play with us!" Claudie begged in broken English, a sure sign that he and his brother were learning and growing rapidly, soon ready to become toddlers.
"Martian hop! Martian hop!" Beak added insistently like any enamored baby, eager to hear his favorite childhood song, not that Pietro agreed (he would have rather have his feet get chewed off by red army ants than listen to that dribble).
"No! Absolutely, NO! NO Martian Hop song!" Pietro bellowed at the top of his lungs angrily, and on cue, Claudie and Beak's respective lips began to tremble, pouting, before they relinquished their grips on Pietro's legs and started bawling, loudly enough for the entire room to hear them.
"Pietro!" Althea warned as she passed by with a truckload of laundry while dragging the vacuum cleaner behind her, "You better not be torturing Claudius and Barney!"
More like the other way around, Pietro thought bitterly before he tried to do anything he could think of to distract the babies from their crying fit.
Pietro tried shaking the toy rattles and squeezing the squeaky dolls in front of them. Claudius and Beak cried harder, still adamant to hear their cherished song.
Pietro tried making funny faces. This earned him a well-thrown wooden block hitting him smartly directly at his lip.
Pietro then tried Sock Puppet Theater. This led to Claudius and Barney throwing absolute baby tantrums, kicking and hitting the floor on their backs and stomachs while screaming and wailing loudly enough to shatter glass (and Pietro's eardrums). Pietro then got desperate as he zoomed off out of the room before returning back with a blue, baby-blanket.
"Look," he said as soothingly and placating as the speedster possibly could, hoping that this could pacify the two infants, "Lookie, lookie! A nice, soft baby blanket, just for the two of you! A blanket to hold and cuddle, and it's all yours if you two please stop crying!"
To his joy, the ploy actually worked, and Claudius and Beak got temporarily interested in the snuggly and slightly threadbare blanket as they immediately ceased their wailing and started to play with the piece of cloth. Pietro sighed with relief, surprised that he was able to so easily distract the babies. Unfortunately…
"Pietro," growled a deep voice behind him, and Pietro turned to see a bug-eyed and incredibly livid Lance, his eyes wide with anger and one corner of his mouth bubbling with froth as he looked at the scene, and the familiar, telltale blanket in Claudius and Beak's respective, grubby hands.
"You gave them my woobie?" Lance asked, twitching slightly.
"It was the only way I could get the babies to stop crying! Oh will you calm down and get a grip, Lance! It was either this or listen to the Martian Hop for two hours straight! And besides, it's only Claudie and Barney! They're just playing! It's not like your woobie is any real danger!" Pietro heatedly argued.
Unfortunately, later that night, Pietro managed to write in his journal while sporting a beauty of a black eye:
I have learned that if I try using the "woobie" to stop the babies from crying, Lance will make me cry.
---
"Hey, have you guys seen Pietro?" Toad asked as he and Xi, returning from training with Blind Master and Roadblock only to find Cover Girl and Low Light sipping coffee at the kitchen table. Low Light shook his head as he sipped from his mug.
"Pietro left twenty minutes ago to teleport to the Institute and bug the X-Men for a while," the Joe sniper provided as he closed his eyes and drank. Xi looked a bit disdainful as he heard this.
"Without the rest of us to bug the X-Men alongside him? Talk about selfish!" the lizard complained as he headed towards the refrigerator for a glass of milk, "I was in the mood for some fun!"
"Considering that Pietro was loaded with enough stink bombs, silly string, and superglue to supply a Third World army, I'm willing to bet that it'll be a lot safer for you kids to remain here, especially since you won't be the ones caught in the X-Students' wrath when they find out who was behind the normal destruction at the Mansion. Besides, it's always funnier to watch someone suffer for pranking as opposed to the actual pranks itself."
"Looks like we might find out soon enough cause here comes Pietro," Todd remarked as he saw Pietro teleport back into the middle of the kitchen. Pietro literally crawled weakly using only his hands, as if he couldn't even walk, and Todd and Xi then saw why.
"Whoa, the nuclear wedgie!" Toad marveled as Pietro crawled past, his underwear tightly pulled over his head and tied in a tight knot around his neck like a noose, "The stuff legends are made of, yo! The move above all moves! The ultimate and most humiliating act on a guy that can ever be done, yo! They say that the nuclear wedgie is so painful, yo, that not even surgery can extract the underwear off your body!"
"Who was it this time? Rogue, Kitty, or Scott?" Xi asked.
"None of them," Pietro managed to gripe despite the pain, "Logan didn't seem to like the joke when I switched his beer with turpentine! And I have to admit, if I wasn't worried at how likely Wolverine just ended the Maximoff family line, I'd say the old man knows how to give a wedgie better than anyone!"
"Anything I can do for you, Pietro?" Low Light asked with a bit of concern as he leaned over the twitching form of Quicksilver on the floor, ignorant of the intensity of his son's pain.
"Yeah, get me medical help as well as my journal, the one Psyche-Out gave me, and write down: 'I have learned that the excuse "It was Bobby's fault" is never taken seriously at the X-Institute on the account that everyone else has used that excuse before.'!"
---
The next day, early in the morning…
"This'll be so cool!" Quinn giggled along with her sisters in their laboratory as they huddled among a gigantic, complex machine about the size of a file cabinet, sleek and shiny and riddled with complex machinery, electronics, and technology that very well surpassed the ones utilized at the headquarters of S.H.I.E.L.D. itself. Despite being in a room of science and dangerous equipment, the Delgado Triplets were wearing casual play-clothes,
"Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy…!" Brittany repeated over and over excitedly, wringing her hands in gleeful and euphoric anticipation, and already annoyed, Daria gave her triplet sister a good slap upside the head.
"Not now, Sis!" she ordered sternly as she examined the settings of the calibration of the machine, "We don't want your big mouth to ruin the monumental occasion, so cork it!"
"You can't blame me for being thrilled, Daria," Brittany said defensively as she rubbed her head, "We just spent over a year building this machine! It's easily the most painstaking and most troublesome apparatus we've ever built! All the time we spent finding rare parts, the sleepless nights we spent doing quantum mechanics and bio-physics, the numerous times we burned our fingers, the hours we spent poring over the McGuffin device blueprints, the instances when we cut ourselves on the machinery, and had those accidental explosions that wrecked our lab at least fifteen times! But we're finished! We're finally finished!"
"Yeah, I know!" giggled a giddy Quinn as she prepared the helmet attached to the machine, "Just think about it! Thanks to the McGuffin's mechanics to bring anything imaginary to life, we're now able to finish an actual working model of a dream-candy machine! Girls, if this works, we'll go down as the saviors and heroes of children worldwide! This'll give us the Nobel Prize for sure!"
"It seems so surreal," sighed Daria in satisfaction as she seemed content with her final check of the machine's statistics, "The Candy-Dreamer 3000! A machine that has the ability to bring any candy, no matter how rare, expensive or gigantic it is, into reality in less than a second! All we have to do is put on the helmet and think of any sweet that comes to mind, and zap! It comes to life right in front of us, fresh, and as hot as we want or as cold as we need it to be! Like those fresh hot chocolate-chip and walnut cookies, freshly made from Alfred himself!"
"Or hot-fudge sundaes with extra whipped cream!" drooled Quinn.
"Or cherry-syrup sodas you can only get from soda fountains and ice-cream parlors!" Brittany sighed.
"Or real chocolate truffles from Germany!"
"Or fresh baklava, oozing with honey!"
"Or those really tasty lotus cakes and sweet red-bean buns we had from Japan one time!"
"Triplets, come on! Lunch is getting cold, and it's your turn to help me with the dishes!" Cover Girl called from the background, and Trinity knew that they shouldn't push their chances with skipping a meal. A bit disappointed, they left, but Quinn kept nervously looking over her shoulder.
"I hope it'll be all right, leaving the Candy-Dreamer 3000 alone in our lab for now," she commented worriedly, but Brittany just waved her sister's fears off dismissively.
"We'll only be gone for an hour and a half for lunch and chores. What's the worst that could happen? No one else knows what we've been working on, Althea and Dad respect our privacy, and no one is possibly that stupid to touch anything in our laboratory. C'mon, let's go eat lunch! Us mad scientists need food too, ya' know?"
Unfortunately, Brittany and her sisters didn't know that Pietro was hiding in the corner while they were conversing, and he had heard every word. Pietro grinned as he zoomed back in Trinity's laboratory and put on the helmet to the Candy-Dreamer 3000.
"Hmmm, maybe I should give this thing a whirl," Pietro murmured happily to himself, "Hmmmm, doesn't look too complex. After all, I've fought Apokolips, the Hellions, H.I.V.E., Trigon, and the Whitelighters! Trying to figure how this thing works shouldn't be too bad! After all, what's the worst that could happen?"
And with that, Pietro started twiddling some knobs and flicking some switches. An hour and twenty minutes later, Daria, Quinn, and Brittany rushed speedily back towards their lab.
"Oh wow, I thought we'd never get those dishes done!" Quinn exclaimed breathlessly, but then she noticed something as they entered their laboratory.
"Hey, did any of you guys leave the door open?" Quinn asked. Daria and Brittany shook their heads before they caught on to why their sister asked that question. The door to their lab was wide open and…
KABOOOOOOOMMMM!
Trinity rushed inside to see, to their horror and grief, the Candy-Dreamer 3000, the one machine that they spent over a year building, the one invention that gave them much joy and grief to construct and plan and calculate, was now an unsalvageable and flaming piece of twisted metal and charred wreckage. And Pietro was standing in the middle of the room, still wearing the remains of the helmet. Pietro coughed a small puff of smoke.
"Ugh, I think I pressed the wrong button or something," he rasped.
"PIETRO!" screamed the Triplets at once.
"Uh…oops?" Pietro's voice was heard gulping as he turned around, caught in the act. Trinity gave him a unified glare that could have easily sent shivers down the spine of Cobra Commander himself.
Later, while he was hiding out in the safe darkness of the laundry hamper, buried underneath the piles of dirty clothes and Toad's underwear (a definite given that Trinity wouldn't come anywhere near his hiding place), Pietro managed to scribble in his journal:
I have learned that Trinity is surprisingly touchy (and vindictive) about anyone who uses their inventions without permission.
"Oh Pietro!" Quinn called out in a sing-song manner somewhere in the Misfit Manor while she loaded her tranquilizer gun, "Where are you? Come on out! We just wanna play…"
"We're not mad anymore, Pietro!" Daria added, lying through her teeth, while readying her spiked mace on a stick, "We just want to give you a nice big hug and a kiss, so come out and let us show how much we love you!"
---
Two days later, after Shipwreck and Cover Girl managed to convince Trinity to let Pietro live without severe and permanent bodily harm…
"Mua ha ha ha ha!" Pietro was heard cackling to himself as he was in the Misfit Manor living room, typing something furiously on his laptop, "I'm gonna make a fortune! I can't believe these guys are paying so much for this stuff!"
Wavedancer, after doing her report on the Marshall Plan for Cover Girl's history class, passed by the living room and overheard Pietro. Sighing, she decided to step in and see whether this required immediate intervention.
"I know I'm going to regret asking this, but what are you doing now, Pietro?" Althea asked wearily, pressing two fingers to her temple where she just knew she was going to develop a headache. Pietro let out a very wicked and devilish beam of mischief and eager profit-hoarding.
"I'm selling stuff on E-Bay right now, and I'm making a killing! You have no idea how much money I'm making off these auctions! I swear, the stuff I'm selling is worth it's weight in gold bullion! I'm literally making thousands of dollars on this stuff! I'm rich, I'm rich, I'm rich! Hee hee hee!"
Althea thought selling merchandise on the Internet seemed harmless enough, but then she remembered who she was talking to. She then asked slowly, choosing her words carefully, "Uh, Pietro? Dare I ask exactly what is it you're selling that is generating so much interest and money?"
"Just a few donations from Batgirl and Supergirl," Pietro cackled as he continued clicking with his mouse. Althea closed her eyes and mentally counted to ten, having now a very good idea of where this was going.
"What kind of donations?" Wavedancer asked wearily.
"Oh, a few of their bras and underwear, not to mention all the photos I left in of the ladies' shower rooms of the Watchtower! And the additional photos I got of Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl were an added bonus! You have no idea how much people are willing to pay for this stuff! I can't process the bids fast enough to keep up with the customers!" Pietro exclaimed in glee.
Althea's face then blanched.
"Pietro, I really think that you should reconsider selling embarrassing stuff like that on E-Bay…" Althea said in a very disturbed voice.
"Oh, it's not like Batgirl and Supergirl will ever find out," Pietro waved off nonchalantly while typing on his computer screen, "Besides, it's a victimless crime, a win-win situation here! It's not like Batgirl and Supergirl had anything truly stunning Hugh Hefner has seen before! And I'm only selling the pictures that don't reveal Batgirl and Supergirl's secret identities."
"Uh, Pietro…" Althea began a little more insistently. Yet the Misfit speedster carried on blithely.
"Besides, if anything, they should be grateful! It's not like I'm decreasing their sex appeal, and I'm actually improving their chances of getting dates and potential suitors from doing this! Okay, so I'm really catering to the bottom of the perverted barrel, but in Batgirl and Supergirl's respective cases, they really can't be choosy beggars, right?"
Althea was making a very big grimace of pain, and Pietro suddenly had a horrifying thought strike his mind of why Althea was acting so peculiar.
"They're right behind me, aren't they?" Pietro winced as he whimpered in a very strained voice, hoping to God that he was paranoid, that Althea would say no. To his dread, Wavedancer nodded, wincing. Quicksilver turned around to see a twitching and fuming Batgirl and Supergirl glaring down upon him, their hands twitching and their eyes narrowed with intense levels of anger and fire. They had somehow teleported into the living room behind Quicksilver's back without the Misfit speedster even knowing it.
They were not very happy.
"You are dead meat, Maximoff…" growled Kara as she cracked her knuckles menacingly.
"Uh…heh-heh, how'd you two know it was me?" Pietro asked meekly.
Later that night, a cast covering his broken right arm and both of his eyes heavily bruised and black and his hair partially singed from the fact that Batgirl rammed his skull through the monitor of the laptop and causing it to catch on fire along with Pietro's head, Quicksilver managed to limp back to his room despite the metal brace on his foot and wrote in his journal:
I have learned that Batgirl can hack into and find any information that is on the Internet. And in retrospect, I really shouldn't have set my E-Bay username to "NumberOneSpeedster".
---
One day, when Pietro knew that Justin was visiting his family at the Lavadome, Pietro decided to make good use of his photo collection as he used the G.I. Joe communication console center to establish a connection to the Lavadome network. The monitor blinked to life to show Allo and Justin as they answered the incoming call, both of whom were a bit taken aback to see Pietro grinning very disturbingly on the screen of their communication end.
"Hey, Pietro!" Justin said, smiling, "What's up? Did you want to talk to me or Montacera?"
"Actually, I wanted to talk with Allo, if you don't mind," Pietro said, barely able to contain his glee. The giant, brown allosaurus looked slightly quizzical as he turned his attention to the Misfit.
"Oh, what about, Pietro? Did you want to ask me about something?" Allo asked.
"Yeah, I was just wondering, since you love Blind Master so much, that if you'd be willing to buy a few photos of him…" Pietro said suggestively, wiggling his eyebrows. Allo got the most peculiar expression on his face while Justin blanched, suddenly having a good inkling of what was coming.
"Um…as, er, thoughtful as the offer is, Pietro, I can honestly say I am not interested in any photos of -" Allo tried shooting down gently, but Pietro just impishly beamed as he held up a Polaroid to the screen.
"Not even this one photo of Blind Master being drunk at the karaoke machine while we were in Vegas?" Pietro asked, and Allo's eyes went wide with shock as he viewed a picture of a bare-chested and swaggering Gabriel wearing a lampshade over his head while engaging into a drinking contest with Shipwreck, Spirit, Roadblock and a group of other men in the middle of the street holding microphones. Justin twitched as he hissed in a fearful tone.
"Uh…Pietro…" Justin tried to begin.
"I also have this one from a lovely set of twenty-four of when Blind Master started dancing with the chorus line girls at the strip club with Justin freaking out," Pietro continued, ignoring the look on his teammate's face, showing Allo a picture of Blind Master kicking his feet up with a line of scantily clad women and with an uncomfortable Whitelighter trying to vainly pull Gabriel off the stage. Allo's teeth clenched painfully as he whirled on his son.
"He took you to a strip club in Las Vegas?" Allo yelled, aghast and outraged.
"It was while we were in a covert mission trying to stop some Cobra soldiers!" yelped Justin before he turned to the screen as gasped, "Pietro, wait! Stop! Blind Master - !"
"And here's a lovely photo of Blind Master juggling chainsaws as part of one of the Las Vegas talent shows and nearly taking Justin's head off in the process during the act. Of course to be fair, Blind Master was still drunk at the time…" Pietro continued blithely, displaying a photo of Blind Master throwing ten active chainsaws in the air, and a hysterical Justin trying his best to catch the ones the Joe was tossing to him in groggy fun, awkwardly trying to avoid getting sliced and decapitated. Allo's eye twitched dangerously.
Pietro then said suggestively, "I can show you more, Allo, if you want, but it's going to cost you a bit. Of course, just for you, I'm willing to release a whole set of fifty during one of our escapades in Vegas for the low, low price of two-hundred and seventy-five dollars, where each one is a grand masterpiece of Drunk-Ninja Theater! So, do we heave a deal?"
Pietro expected to make a nice hunk of change of profit from this. He expected Justin to freak out while his Dinosaucer father lost his temper. But what he didn't expect was to hear Blind Master's voice coming from the monitor.
"Quicksilver…" growled Blind Master as he appeared next to Justin on the scene. Justin winced as he meekly explained.
"Pietro…I tried to tell you. Blind Master was in the room with us when you called. And he heard every word."
Pietro visibly gulped. On the monitor, Blind Master looked angry enough to hit the roof. Allo looked angry enough to hit Blind Master. And Justin was in the middle of the two father-figures, hiding his face in his hands and totally humiliated.
"Uh…heh-heh, sorrygottagobye!" Pietro hurriedly said in his super-speed as he turned off the screen and dashed off for an appropriate hiding place before Gabriel and Allo could teleport back to the Misfit Manor and throttle him.
Later that night…
"Gee, this is going to make a great entry!" Pietro griped sarcastically as he peeled a potato as part of his KP duty, "I can imagine writing now 'I have learned that some people just have no sense of humor'!"
"If it was a joke, we're not laughing," Blind Master sighed resentfully as he peeled alongside his ward before asking with fatigue, "Pietro, why do you always have to be such an insensitive pain sometimes?"
"If anything, I am grateful for Quicksilver in finally showing me proof of how much of an irresponsible idiot you are, Moore!" snapped Allo, fuming as he peeled, a difficult feat it itself considering his large and bulky claws were not adapted to the task of holding a relatively tiny spud and potato peeler.
"This coming from the irrational and nagging Barney-reject who caused me to accidentally teleport into General Hawk's office when he tried to tackle me, you jackass!" Blind Master shot back, seething. Allo's teeth clenched rather painfully as he growled at the Joe soldier.
"You know, I normally draw the line about beating up cripples, but in your case, I'll make an exception!" Allo rumbled.
"Just you try it, butthead!" Blind Master challenged, making a fist around the potato peeler he was holding.
"Dad, Blind Master, please stop fighting," Justin whined wearily, an edge to his voice as he peeled symbolically sitting between the Dinosaucer and the Misfit handler, "General Hawk said that if he heard any more quarreling between the two of you, he'll personally assign more KP duty to all of us as well as doing mandatory sessions with Psyche-Out."
"Blame Blind Master for this, Justin," Allo grumbled, "After all, it's solely his fault we desecrated Hawk's office and got put here as punishment in the first place!"
"If I recall correctly, it was you who jolted my teleportation watch when you tried to grab me and caused us to teleport into Hawk's office in the first place! And it was your stupid tail that knocked down his walls and ceiling!" Gabriel returned rather snidely.
"Please, both of you stop," Justin pleaded, "We have to do another week of KP duty together, so like it or not, all four of us are stuck together like this, so please, can we at least try to hold our peace and just remain civil towards each other? We still have to wash the dishes from the Joes' dinner shift after this."
Pietro looked thoughtful as he then remarked, "You know, I might be able to convince General Hawk to lessen our KP duty time, especially once I show him the embarrassing pictures I got of him drunk and naked at the Mardi Gras parade last year…"
The only response Allo, Justin, and Blind Master gave was throwing their potatoes, all three spuds scoring a direct hit on Pietro's forehead soundly.
---
Quicksilver let out a round of evil laughter as he and Sergeant Snuffles were camped out in a hidden army bunker, cleverly built in the side of a small hill and embedded deep within the dirt and propped up with wooden support beams. Pietro cackled as he took photo after photo of Sergeant Snuffles tied to a chair with a blowtorch and a chainsaw laid out in a suggestive and deadly manner next to the stuffed teddy bear. Along with each photo was a handwritten caption in block letters: "Buy the Misfits a new XBOX 360 machine or the bear gets it!"
"Hee hee hee," Pietro said to himself, "I'm a genius, a sheer genius! If Roadblock and Low Light won't buy us a new game system, Beach Head certainly will…especially if he doesn't want Sergeant Snuffles to meet an untimely demise! And the best part of it is he'll never be able to prove it was me! The rest of the Misfits wanted a new XBOX as much I did, so he won't be able to single out which Misfit kidnapped Sergeant Snuffles! And Beach Head will freak out in his typical mode and do absolutely whatever the ransom says, making him putty in my hands! And the bunker is miles and miles away from the Pit, so Beach Head will never be able to find it! Hee hee hee! I'm brilliant! Mua ha ha ha ha!"
"You're not THAT brilliant, Maximoff," growled a very angry and feral voice behind him, and Pietro nearly wet in pants in shock and fear as he turned around with dread only to find himself eye to eye with a very furious Beach Head, the army ranger's eyes wide and bloodshot with rage. And to make matters worse, the ski-masked Joe was blocking the door in the tiny, cramped bunker, making escape for Pietro impossible.
"Uh…heh, heh, how'd you get here so quick?" uttered a very intimidated and fearful Pietro in a strained voice as Beach Head roughly grabbed the Misfit by the collar. Beach Head held up his left wrist in plain view to show Quicksilver the teleporter wristband of the Mass Device strapped to his hand.
"Trinity lent me a spare teleporter watch," Beach Head growled in a very lethal manner, "You'd be surprised to find how much they were willing to part with one, especially since I bribed them with ice cream and Jolly Ranchers. Plus, the fact that they wanted to get back at you for breaking their candy machine was an additional incentive."
"But how'd you find me?" gasped Pietro as Beach Head dragged him out of the bunker in a very tight headlock, carrying his relinquished teddy bear with his other hand. Later that night, after scrubbing all the men's bathrooms with a toothbrush while wearing fifty pound weights on his wrists and ankles, Pietro managed to limp back to his room and write:
I have learned that Beach Head is a lot smarter than we give him credit for since he started hiding a tracking sensor inside Sergeant Snuffles.
---
It was a quiet day at the X-Mansion, with the birds chirping along the gardens of the Institute and the sun dancing upon the waters trickling down the fountains serenely in the front gardens, all the plants lush with flowers.
KAAA-BOOOOOOOMMM!
"Oh my God!" screamed Amara, "Dyed shaving cream! It's everywhere!"
"Remy gonna kill Pietro!" howled Gambit from another part of the X-Mansion.
"Take a number! He's mine! I've got first dibs! AUGH! He spray-painted my room! That little, white-haired nimrod spray-painted my room! And regardless of what it says, Quicksilver does NOT rule!" Roberto yelled.
Meanwhile, back at the Misfit Manor…
"My keyboard!" wailed Quinn, "Someone put superglue on my keyboard! My fingers are stuck!"
A hoarse scream of rage came from Lance's room before the geokinetic roared, "My Jeep! It's gone! My Jeep is gone! It's not in the driveway anymore!"
"Who ate all the cookies! My cookies? I had a package of Pepperidge Farms with my name written on it!" Xi gasped in shock.
"WHERE'S PIETRO?" every mutant screamed inside the Pit.
Meanwhile, up the Watchtower with the home-base of the Justice League hovering with tranquil peace in upper orbit of the planet Earth…
Bang! Crash! Boom! Kapow! Bash! Smash!
"Woo hoo, woo hoo, woo hoo hoo hoo!" whooped a very hyper Wally West as the Flash was heard running around every level of the base, causing chaos left and right and breaking much in the process.
"Flash, get back here right now and calm down! Put down that paintball gun now! I mean it!" yelled Green Lantern as he flew after the speedster.
"Who gave Wally B.A.'s coffee?" Superman was heard bellowing from the kitchen, "I found a whole empty sack of the stuff in the galley! Wally drank all of it!"
"Oh no…" groaned Martian Manhunter.
"What kind of asinine and abysmally idiotic twit would find it even remotely amusing to give Flash this caffeinated poison?" Wonder Woman growled, bristling. Batman and Hawkgirl then came to the conclusion simultaneously.
"Quicksilver…" they hissed, growing more livid by the second.
Meanwhile, at the Titans Tower in Jump City…
"My ROOM IS PINK!" Raven was heard shrieking in rage at her newly remodeled room, "SOMEONE PAINTED MY ROOM PINK!"
"My glork is ruined! It is simply ruined!" Starfire was heard wailing from the kitchens, "Some clorbag varblernelk put the red sauce of Tabasco in my glork! It is ruined!"
Robin was heard yelling from the operations center, "The fire alarms have all gone off! Someone activated all the alarms in the Titans Tower! They've all gone haywire!"
Naturally, the Titans jumped at the most reasonable conclusion and settled the matter in a peaceful and calm procedure…
"Come back here and die, Beast Boy! Your little green butt's gonna be mine!" Cyborg snarled as he and Robin chased after the terrified furry, green changeling who was screaming bloody murder and running for his soon-to-be-shortened life. Starfire was flying above the half-robot teenager with her eyes glowing angrily with emerald luminosity. Yet as the three Titans started pounding Garfield, Raven managed to telepathically read into the changeling's mind before she discovered something vital.
"It's not him!" she cried out, ceasing the bloody brawl, "It's not Beast Boy! He wasn't responsible for this! I just looked into his mind! It's not him!"
"You sure?" blinked Robin, ceasing his attack instantly. Raven nodded.
"Sorry about that Gar…" Cyborg apologized as he brushed off a sooty and heavily bruised Beast Boy, helping the adolescent stand up, but with a groan, the changeling rolled his eyes back and passed out, toppling back onto the floor. Raven then continued.
"Well if it's not Beast Boy, and Mas and Menos are on a mission in the African jungle with Titans East, so it's not them, then who else could be so irresponsible and childish and foolish and immature and – oh screw it, it's Quicksilver from the Misfits. Who else could it be?"
"Let's get him, y'all!" Cyborg yelled, eager for some payback.
"Hold it!" Robin commanded sternly, "We can't accuse Pietro of something just because it fits his MO! It could be disastrous if it turns out Pietro had nothing to do with it and is as innocent as – oh, who am I kidding? Let's teleport to the Pit and hunt him down!"
Later that night at the Lavadome base of the Dinosaucers, Pietro managed to write from his hiding place underneath Montacera's bed:
I have learned that I really shouldn't play pranks on everyone at the same time.
"It is safe to come out now, young Mr. Maximoff," Alfred Pennyworth said as he teleported into Montacera's bedroom with a spare teleporter watch of the Mass Device given to him by Trinity, "It is just me, checking up and seeing how you're doing."
Pietro had never been so glad to see the elderly butler in his entire life. He knew that despite the risk, Alfred really wouldn't rat him out. Besides, Pietro needed to confide in someone during his "isolation", and he needed to get food somehow.
"Thanks, Alfred," sighed Pietro, "Hope no one else was able to guess you're helping me or where I'm hiding right now."
"Well, considering that the Lavadome is the last place they'd consider looking for you since only the Misfits know of it, and Montacera agreed to hide you in her room without Allo's knowledge…" Alfred pointed out before handing Pietro a tray of food. On it, slightly steaming, was a nice bowl of homemade cream of butternut-squash soup and a turkey sandwich.
"I brought you soup and a sandwich for simple sustenance while you wait for this entire unpleasantness to, shall I say, blow over," the British butler said, though one could easily note that despite the annoyance, the grandfather-figure was generally concerned and worried about the Misfit's safety and well-being. Despite the fact that he firmly believed in punishments well deserved, Alfred certainly didn't want Pietro to be at the mercy of Batman and the X-Men, the Titans and the Misfits should they ever get their hands on him.
"You mean it hasn't?" Pietro asked, shocked as he gulped down some soup, ravenous, "It's been a whole day! How mad could they possibly be?"
"Um…well, I daresay I don't think you should come back home yet," Alfred hesitantly warned.
"How mad are they?" Pietro asked again.
"I shall put it to you this way: Batman has filled out the paperwork for you to be accepted as a patient at Gotham City's Arkham Asylum…and coincidentally, you'd be the Joker's new inmate," Alfred said with reluctance.
---
The following week, when things actually calmed down and all four groups were able to maintain a hold on their murderous urges, Pietro wrote another addendum to the journal Psyche-Out gave him as the book laid out open and peacefully on the dining room table:
I have learned that there is such a thing as a "Top Ten Most Lucrative Bounty Hunter Targets" and coincidentally, I'm number five on the list.
Unfortunately, Pietro was nowhere to be seen in the kitchen, and for a very good reason.
The Misfit speedster was being pursued around the Pit by a massive horde of unscrupulous and psychopathic bounty hunters, all of them armed to the teeth with weapons and various implements to snare their prey.
"HELP! HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME!" Pietro was heard screaming outside the house where the Misfits were all gathered around Quinn's laptop as Quinn brought up the information she hacked into easily on the Internet. Justin, Lina, Daria, and Quinn were watching the scene outside with a mixture of unease and amusement.
"Wow, I didn't know the National Association of Bounty Hunters had a website," Fred remarked as he scratched his head.
"I didn't know they have a 'Top Ten' list," Xi added, "Oh wow, look, I see Senator Kelly's name on this list!"
"I can't believe this," remarked Lance, still shocked, "Why aren't the adults stopping this?"
"They're over at the X-Mansion discussing tactics for nullifying the upcoming Heartless threat with the Titans and the Justice League and the Professor, so it's just us here at Misfit Manor, home alone and the Joes won't be back until tonight," Fred answered.
"I can't believe Pietro managed to make the list off an association of bounty hunters, of all groups…" Lance continued.
"Yeah, I know! Why didn't I know of this sooner? Then I wouldn't have spent so much money on the hit men I hired to kill Pietro three years ago! These guys' rates are great! I normally can't find better bargains per hour! And if I ever feel bored with trying to off my manic brother, these bounty hunters will be great references for killing my father!" marveled Wanda as she began writing down the contact information of a particular bounty hunter by the name of "Deadpool".
"You hired hit men on your brother?" Lina asked, her jaw dropping.
"This was when I first got out of the mental asylum when Mystique sprung me, so since I just escaped into the real world, I was a little eager to off Pietro for abandoning me, remember?" Wanda explained as she jotted down the e-mail address of someone named Domino, "And besides, even then, I still needed to get back at Pietro for sending a copy of my potty-training videos to 'America's Funniest Home Videos' for everyone to see on national TV."
"If it was any consolation, we got the runner-up three-hundred dollar cash prize for your entry," Fred pointed out.
"I thought you hired the hit men on Quickie for the time when he hid all the tampons and pads from the Brotherhood House on that day you really needed them, yo," Todd pointed out, a bit confused as he scratched his head.
"No, that time, I got back at my brother simply by putting Nair in his hair gel. Remember the three weeks when he was as bald as Professor Xavier?"
"Oh yeah…" Lance, Fred, and Todd nodded, recalling the event.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" screamed Pietro from the outside of the house.
"Um…Wanda, is this sort of vindictiveness even healthy?" Lina asked hesitantly. Althea gave the insect-like girl a sardonic look.
"Trust me, Lina, any time a Misfit plans on getting even is the best kind of therapy the world can ever offer! Nothing says bonding better in this family than plotting to make someone else's life miserable, especially if he or she deserves it! Besides, you rather have Wanda repress the anger inside and wait until she blows up, literally?" the Misfit leader highlighted.
"You have a point," Lina admitted as she continued watching outside along with Trinity, "Oh my, that one looked like it hurt. Pietro got it in the butt…"
"From what I can see, the bounty on Pietro's higher than the ones put on Cobra Commander combined!" marveled Xi despite himself.
"Um…shouldn't we help him?" Lina asked as she peered out the window alongside Trinity, "Oh dear, they're now using electrified fishing nets to catch Pietro."
Ka-zaaaaappp!
"Yeeeeeooooowww!" Quicksilver was heard screaming outside.
"Hmmm…he's going to have an interesting hairstyle for a while," Daria commented lazily as she took a photo of the albino teenager screaming shrilly while the pack was at his heels.
"Um…Lina has a point," Justin pointed out, "Maybe we should help Pietro. He might get hurt."
"I think we should let Pietro spend some quality time with these nice men for a little longer," grinned Wavedancer as she looked on.
"You're still mad at Pietro switching the Half-n-Half with Lactaid, aren't you?" Lance asked.
"Pretty much," Althea admitted before she continued, "And besides, Pietro isn't in any real trouble anyway. Bounty hunters lose a portion of the money they're promised if their target gets killed, so judging that these guys probably want to get every red cent they can squeeze out of this, Pietro isn't going to get killed."
"Why isn't someone helping me! Ow, my face!" Pietro was screaming.
"But who'd want to put a bounty on Pietro?" Justin asked. Althea and the rest of the Misfits (Wanda especially) turned to give Whitelighter a very dry and deadpanned look that clearly asked something along the lines of "Do you want a list?" Justin blushed as he scratched the back of his head.
"Sorry, stupid question…" he admitted, embarrassed.
---
Two days later, Psyche-Out was with Quicksilver during Pietro's personal session with the doctor…
"I see you seemed to have learned your particular lessons the hard way, Pietro," sighed Psyche-Out as he looked up at his patient after reading every single statement the Misfit had written. Pietro was in a full body cast, and the only part of his body that wasn't wrapped in bandages was his heavily black-and-blue face, marred with additional scratches. Apparently, the bounty hunters had gotten a bit too brutal, and luckily, the adults composing of Shipwreck, Blind Master, Spirit, Cover Girl, Roadblock, and Low Light arrived in time to send them packing with general and unprintably violent threats of what they would do if they ever tried hurting their ward ever again.
"Yeah, this whole writing 'what-have-I-learned' thing was a big help," Pietro drawled sarcastically.
"And what have you learned from this entire exercise, Pietro?" Psyche-Out asked.
"Absolutely nothing!" griped the albino Adonis bitterly. The Joe doctor gave Quicksilver a dry look before rolling his eyes upwards.
"Why is it I'm not surprised?" Psyche-Out sighed to himself heavily, "I should be, and yet I'm not…"
The End