Santa Fred
(A reindeer pooped on the disclaimer telling you that I don't own X-Men: Evolution characters. Bad Rudolph!)
"Guess what, guys?"
Fred came in the door all excited.
"What? New all-you-can-eat buffet opened up?" Toad guessed.
"Nah! Better!"
"You won the National Foods Cooking Contest?" said Lance. "No, even better!" Pietro looked bored. "Will you just tell us already?"
"Okay." Fred reached into a plastic bag and pulled out a red-and-white hat. "Ta-daa!"
In the silence, he could almost hear crickets chirp. No, that couldn't be right. No cricket was safe with Toad in the house. "That's it?" Fred couldn't believe how stupid they were. "No, that's not it! I'm the new Santa at the mall!"
"No way!" Toad said. He looked around for that cricket that had been chirping.
"Way! I've got the suit and the beard and everything! I start the day after Thanksgiving!" "You, a Santa?!" laughed Pietro. "What's wrong with me being Santa? They said I didn't even need padding or anything!"
"That's for sure," said Toad. Normally Fred hated it when anyone called him fat, but right now he was so hyped up about the Santa thing that he didn't even notice. "I gotta go practice!"
"Practice what?" Lance asked. "You can't say 'Ho, ho, ho'?"
Pietro got that evil look in his eye. "Speaking of ho's--" "Excuse me?!!" demanded his sister Wanda indignantly,l ooking like she wanted to do him in with the nearest convenient blunt instrument. "I wasn't talking about you!"
"Sure you weren't! You were looking at me!" "Well, I . . ." She hit him. Hard. "Ow!"
"Hey!" Fred stepped between them. "Santa says be nice!" Wanda stared at him. "Huh?" "You're not the real Santa!" Pietro said. "I could be." "I don't have time for this!" "Neither do I." Wanda grumbled. "Let me at him!" "You can't beat up Santa!" Toad said.
"HE'S NOT SANTA!" Even Lance was getting into it . . . There was the sound of a slammed door.
The front door, to be precise.
"Uh oh . . ." said Toad.
Mystique was home. "What is going on now?" she demanded. Wanda and Pietro wasted no time pointing fingers at each other. "He called me a--"
"She said she was gonna--"
"Quiet or I'll tell your father!" That shut them up pretty quickly. She looked at Fred, in his Santa hat. "And what are you all dressed up for?" "I'm gonna be Santa at the mall this year." "You? Santa?" Fred nodded. "Are they paying you for this, or is it a volunteer deal?" "$10 an hour." Fred told her. "WHAT?" Pietro squeaked. "For sitting on your butt and listening to little kids? I want in on this!"
"Too late. They've already hired all the Santas they need."
Pietro took the sofa cushion out of his shirt and sighed. "Figures." "You'd make a lousy Santa anyway." Wanda razzed him. "Shut up!"
"You shut up!" "BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP!" Mystique yelled. She was getting a headache. "I'm going to my room. If you have anything further to say to each other, you can discuss it with your father when he comes for Thanksgiving."
Both of them went pale. "He's--he's coming here?" Wanda gasped.
"Yes," said Mystique. "He said something about wanting to spend the holidays with you." "You've got to be kidding."Pietro insisted. "He wants to come here? Hasn't he got better things to do? Like taking over the world or whatever?"
"Look, I just talked to him on the phone, okay? He said he's coming, and he wants to have a real family holiday."
"Which holiday?" Wanda asked. Mystique rolled her eyes. Could these two really be so dense? "What do you mean, which holiday?"
"I mean is he gonna be gone after Hannukah, or is he sticking around till after New Year's?" Pietro asked.
"He didn't say." Wanda sighed. "That means we'll probably be stuck with him till Valentine's Day . . ." "Let's move to Mexico," Pietro said. He zoomed off and reappeared with a packed suitcase. "Hold it." Mystique stepped in front of him. "You're not going anywhere." "But, Mystique--" "I'm not going to explain this to him." Pietro looked like he'd just been sentenced to life without parole at Alcatraz. "C'mon . . ." "He's your father. He's been away for months. The least you can do is show him some respect." "Like he deserves any." Wanda was especially bitter towards her father, after all she'd been through. She started to say something harsh about her father when Fred stepped in again. "Take it easy, Wanda!" "Or what? 'Santa' won't bring me any toys?" "He wouldn't bring us any anyway, Wanda." Pietro scoffed. "That's for sure," said Toad. "You both act like jerks." Both twins turned on him, and were about to pound the slime out of him, when Mystique grabbed them by their collars. "I will not have you two behaving like this when your father is here! Now go to your rooms!"
"HEY!" They both protested.
"If you're going to act like five-year-olds, that's how you'll be treated," Mystique said. "You're not to come out until dinnertime." Glaring at each other, Wanda and Pietro stomped upstairs to their respective rooms, and slammed the doors. Fred turned his attention to putting on his Santa suit. "Well?" he said, when he was finished.
Mystique frowned. "Couldn't they have found you a bigger size?" "They looked." "And you have to wear this when?" "Every day till Christmas." said Fred. It looked ridiculous. The bottom of the jacket and the waistband of the pants hardly met. And as for the hat, it barely covered the top of his head. "Hmm," she said, "we can fix it, I hope. Where's Pietro?"
"Uh, you sent him to his room," Fred said.
Mystique went up and knocked on Pietro's door. "If you're ready to behave like a human being," she said, "I have a job for you."
"Is Wanda involved?"
"No."
"Okay." "Now then, Pietro," Mystique said, "if you can be nice, what we have for you is a simple tailoring job." Pietro blinked. "Tailoring?" The door banged open, and he stood there with tape measure in hand. "You ask, I'll make. What did you have in mind? Some nice lingerie? A new costume, perhaps--I can see you in black leather, for some reason . . ." Fred rolled his eyes. "Very funny." "Pietro . . ." Mystique warned. "Well, let's face it, the Blob-man here needs a new wardrobe." Fred held up his Santa cap."What's wrong with this?" "I'll tell you what's wrong with it. You've got a size Small suit on an XXXXL body, that's what."
"Hey!"
"I'm just telling it like it is, pal. Hmm, let me see . . . I think I have some fabric to match that. I can put in some panels along the sides . . . maybe something on the bottom of the jacket . . ."
Three hours later Fred showed off his newly-redesigned Santa suit. "Now that's more like it." Pietro said. There was only a slight variation between the color of the pants and that of the side panels Pietro had added. The strip around the bottom of the jacket was hidden by an extra layer of fake fur. Even the hat was a little bigger.
It wasn't perfect, but the little kids would never notice.
"See? All ready, and we've still got three days to make any more changes."
Two days later, Magneto arrived on schedule for the Thanksgiving feast. Toad braced himself for disaster. Wanda barricaded herself in her room, and refused to come out until "he" was gone.
Mystique tried to reason with her. (That was no small feat.) "No! I won't come out and pretend to be happy in front of that--" "That what?" "You know."
"No, I don't. Come out and talk to me."
"Not if he's here!"
"Wanda, you're being unreasonable!" "I'M being unreasonable?" Wanda was furious. "He's your father!"
"Well, tell him to act like one!"
"Santa to the rescue!" The suit was really going to Freddy's head. He leaned as close as he could to the crack in the door and whispered, "There's milk and cookies in it for you." That got Wanda's attention. "Okay," she said. "For milk and cookies. But they'd better be good cookies!"
By the time they sat down to dinner, things were a bit calmer. Toad, however, still braced himself for disaster. The Brotherhood did not do Thanksgiving well. Or any other holiday for that matter. He still shuddered when he thought about the time Pietro had tried to make a Hanukkah meal . . . .
********
"These pancakes taste funny," Fred said.
Pietro's jaw nearly scraped the floor. "FRED! Those were for tonight!"
"Whuh?"
"But you're kicking us out of the house tonight!" Todd pointed out. "You want to be alone so you can eat pancakes?" Pietro wanted to hit Toad in the worst way. "That's not why I want you guys out of the house." "Well, why, then? It's not like it's some big secret that you're Jewish! We'll stay out of your way! What?"
"You wouldn't understand," Pietro said. "Hey, Freddy, you gonna leave me some of those?"
"Huh?"
********
"I'm not sitting next to him, and that's final!"
So much for calm. "We don't have time for this, Wanda--" Tad was in his high chair, dressed in his big-boy suit (which would probably be covered in food by the end of the meal, but no one cared). Mystique had taken a little of the dinner and ground it up in the food processor. She was very proud of him. Today, Tad was the least of her problems.
The seating arrangement had to be adjusted so that Wanda and Pietro weren't sitting next to each other. But she couldn't put Toad between them, because his pathetic attempts at flirting made Wanda furious. She couldn't put Magneto on their side of the table, either, unless she wanted to listen to them argue all day.
In the end, she decided Magneto would sit at the head of the table. Going around to the right, it went: Lance, Pietro, Toad, Tad, Wanda, Fred, and then Mystique. This way nobody was next to anyone they didn't want to talk to. It had taken her six tries to get it right.
The only remaining problem now was that Fred insisted on wearing his Santa suit to the table.
"Don't you have something else that fits?" Mystique asked.
"I wanna get the feel of it, before I wear it for real tomorrow."
"What if you spill something on it?"
"It's washable!"
"I don't care! You're not wearing it!" As if she didn't have enough of a headache already.
"It's the only dress-up clothes I have!"
"I'll go make you some more!" Pietro offered. "I still have your measurements from before--"
He raced off and came back with a navy blue suit. "Took me a little longer than I thought. I was going back and forth--wide lapels? Thin lapels? Wide? Thin? Then I sort of came up with the idea to--"
Mystique grabbed the clothes out of his hands and thrust them at Fred. "Go change! Dinner's almost ready!"
Fred lumbered out of the room. Mystique went back to the kitchen. "It would be nice," she said loudly, "if I had some help in here!"
The limp bodies on the couch in front of the football game didn't stir an inch.
She decided to get a little more specific. "Lance, set the table. Toad, get your brother into the high chair. There's a bib in the top drawer. Wanda, help me put these dishes on the table."
Still no one moved.
"NOW!" Everybody moved then, like they were on fire.
Dinner went fine--apart from Wanda glaring at Pietro, and a minor argument erupting over the potatoes when Fred wouldn't pass them over to Lance. Then, just before the dessert, Wanda heard her father talk about grandchildren. It was only a passing remark, but it was enough to make her stand up and declare, "I am never having kids! Never! I'm not going to inflict more demon spawn on the world!"
"Demon spawn?" This caught Toad's attention. "Who's a demon?"
"Guess." Wanda's voice was like ice, and the look in her eyes was scary.
"I thik you're overreacting just a tad," Magneto said. Big mistake.
'OVERREACTING? YOU THINK I'M OVERREACTING?"
"Oh boy," said Toad. He dived under the table and made himself scarce. So did everybody else, except for Magneto, who remained locked in a battle of wits with his willful daughter.
Tad was still strapped into his high chair, and he hadn't yet figured out how to get out of it. "Gabee dah?" But Uncle Magneto and Auntie Wanda were too busy fighting to notice. They were yelling . . . and Tad didn't like yelling. "Nice going, yo," Toad grumbled. "You're making Tad cry." Wanda gave him a look that made him secretly want to run away,but nevertheless he stood firm.He told her and Pietro, "I don't know what your problem is, but you gotta work it out yourselves, yo. I mean, you're family! Families gotta stick together!" Apart from fathers who dumped their kids on their other kids' doorsteps, but he didn't count.
"I'm not sticking with anyone who let me get locked away in the loonybin!" "What do you mean, let you get locked away?" Magneto looked at her as if she were insane. "You know what I mean!" "Well I don't!" Lance said. Wanda got up from the table. "I don't feel like talking about it. I'm going to my room." Tad looked at Wanda. "Ahdee," he said. "Ahdee Babah." Wanda blinked in surprise. Was he trying to talk to her? "Ahgoo-ahgoo," Tad said.
"What did he say?" Wanda asked.
"I think he's trying to say huggle-wuggles," said Toad. Wanda stared at him. "Huggle-wuggles?" Tad reached up for her.
"Well . . . okay." She picked Tad up . . . It turned into a group hug before she knew it. "Toad!" she choked. "Get off me!"
"What? I wasn't touching you anywhere nasty!"
"All of you is nasty!" she shrieked, pulling away.
"Aw, c'mon, Wanda, I wasn't gonna hurt you . . ."
"I just don't like being touched, all right?" "Poh Ahdee Babah," said Tad. Toad was amazed. "Hey, he's talking!"
"He's always talked," Fred said.
"I mean really talking! Words we can understand, yo."
"How old is he?" Wanda asked.
"Uh . . ." The boys were looking away. "How can you not know how old he is?"
"Well, we kinda know, but not exactly. See, he was just dumped on our doorstep one day."
"Uh huh."
"I bet Santa knows how old Tad is," Fred said. "Why don't we ask him?" "Sada?" said Tad. "Uh . . ." Toad said, thinking fast. "Yeah! Fred, you can call Santa on the hotline or something and ask him, yo."
"Hotline?"
"You know . . . the one all the mall Santas have, so they can tell the real Santa what the kids want for Christmas?"
"Oh yeah!" "Are you staying for dessert, then?" asked Mystique. Wanda shrugged. "I guess so."
(A reindeer pooped on the disclaimer telling you that I don't own X-Men: Evolution characters. Bad Rudolph!)
"Guess what, guys?"
Fred came in the door all excited.
"What? New all-you-can-eat buffet opened up?" Toad guessed.
"Nah! Better!"
"You won the National Foods Cooking Contest?" said Lance. "No, even better!" Pietro looked bored. "Will you just tell us already?"
"Okay." Fred reached into a plastic bag and pulled out a red-and-white hat. "Ta-daa!"
In the silence, he could almost hear crickets chirp. No, that couldn't be right. No cricket was safe with Toad in the house. "That's it?" Fred couldn't believe how stupid they were. "No, that's not it! I'm the new Santa at the mall!"
"No way!" Toad said. He looked around for that cricket that had been chirping.
"Way! I've got the suit and the beard and everything! I start the day after Thanksgiving!" "You, a Santa?!" laughed Pietro. "What's wrong with me being Santa? They said I didn't even need padding or anything!"
"That's for sure," said Toad. Normally Fred hated it when anyone called him fat, but right now he was so hyped up about the Santa thing that he didn't even notice. "I gotta go practice!"
"Practice what?" Lance asked. "You can't say 'Ho, ho, ho'?"
Pietro got that evil look in his eye. "Speaking of ho's--" "Excuse me?!!" demanded his sister Wanda indignantly,l ooking like she wanted to do him in with the nearest convenient blunt instrument. "I wasn't talking about you!"
"Sure you weren't! You were looking at me!" "Well, I . . ." She hit him. Hard. "Ow!"
"Hey!" Fred stepped between them. "Santa says be nice!" Wanda stared at him. "Huh?" "You're not the real Santa!" Pietro said. "I could be." "I don't have time for this!" "Neither do I." Wanda grumbled. "Let me at him!" "You can't beat up Santa!" Toad said.
"HE'S NOT SANTA!" Even Lance was getting into it . . . There was the sound of a slammed door.
The front door, to be precise.
"Uh oh . . ." said Toad.
Mystique was home. "What is going on now?" she demanded. Wanda and Pietro wasted no time pointing fingers at each other. "He called me a--"
"She said she was gonna--"
"Quiet or I'll tell your father!" That shut them up pretty quickly. She looked at Fred, in his Santa hat. "And what are you all dressed up for?" "I'm gonna be Santa at the mall this year." "You? Santa?" Fred nodded. "Are they paying you for this, or is it a volunteer deal?" "$10 an hour." Fred told her. "WHAT?" Pietro squeaked. "For sitting on your butt and listening to little kids? I want in on this!"
"Too late. They've already hired all the Santas they need."
Pietro took the sofa cushion out of his shirt and sighed. "Figures." "You'd make a lousy Santa anyway." Wanda razzed him. "Shut up!"
"You shut up!" "BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP!" Mystique yelled. She was getting a headache. "I'm going to my room. If you have anything further to say to each other, you can discuss it with your father when he comes for Thanksgiving."
Both of them went pale. "He's--he's coming here?" Wanda gasped.
"Yes," said Mystique. "He said something about wanting to spend the holidays with you." "You've got to be kidding."Pietro insisted. "He wants to come here? Hasn't he got better things to do? Like taking over the world or whatever?"
"Look, I just talked to him on the phone, okay? He said he's coming, and he wants to have a real family holiday."
"Which holiday?" Wanda asked. Mystique rolled her eyes. Could these two really be so dense? "What do you mean, which holiday?"
"I mean is he gonna be gone after Hannukah, or is he sticking around till after New Year's?" Pietro asked.
"He didn't say." Wanda sighed. "That means we'll probably be stuck with him till Valentine's Day . . ." "Let's move to Mexico," Pietro said. He zoomed off and reappeared with a packed suitcase. "Hold it." Mystique stepped in front of him. "You're not going anywhere." "But, Mystique--" "I'm not going to explain this to him." Pietro looked like he'd just been sentenced to life without parole at Alcatraz. "C'mon . . ." "He's your father. He's been away for months. The least you can do is show him some respect." "Like he deserves any." Wanda was especially bitter towards her father, after all she'd been through. She started to say something harsh about her father when Fred stepped in again. "Take it easy, Wanda!" "Or what? 'Santa' won't bring me any toys?" "He wouldn't bring us any anyway, Wanda." Pietro scoffed. "That's for sure," said Toad. "You both act like jerks." Both twins turned on him, and were about to pound the slime out of him, when Mystique grabbed them by their collars. "I will not have you two behaving like this when your father is here! Now go to your rooms!"
"HEY!" They both protested.
"If you're going to act like five-year-olds, that's how you'll be treated," Mystique said. "You're not to come out until dinnertime." Glaring at each other, Wanda and Pietro stomped upstairs to their respective rooms, and slammed the doors. Fred turned his attention to putting on his Santa suit. "Well?" he said, when he was finished.
Mystique frowned. "Couldn't they have found you a bigger size?" "They looked." "And you have to wear this when?" "Every day till Christmas." said Fred. It looked ridiculous. The bottom of the jacket and the waistband of the pants hardly met. And as for the hat, it barely covered the top of his head. "Hmm," she said, "we can fix it, I hope. Where's Pietro?"
"Uh, you sent him to his room," Fred said.
Mystique went up and knocked on Pietro's door. "If you're ready to behave like a human being," she said, "I have a job for you."
"Is Wanda involved?"
"No."
"Okay." "Now then, Pietro," Mystique said, "if you can be nice, what we have for you is a simple tailoring job." Pietro blinked. "Tailoring?" The door banged open, and he stood there with tape measure in hand. "You ask, I'll make. What did you have in mind? Some nice lingerie? A new costume, perhaps--I can see you in black leather, for some reason . . ." Fred rolled his eyes. "Very funny." "Pietro . . ." Mystique warned. "Well, let's face it, the Blob-man here needs a new wardrobe." Fred held up his Santa cap."What's wrong with this?" "I'll tell you what's wrong with it. You've got a size Small suit on an XXXXL body, that's what."
"Hey!"
"I'm just telling it like it is, pal. Hmm, let me see . . . I think I have some fabric to match that. I can put in some panels along the sides . . . maybe something on the bottom of the jacket . . ."
Three hours later Fred showed off his newly-redesigned Santa suit. "Now that's more like it." Pietro said. There was only a slight variation between the color of the pants and that of the side panels Pietro had added. The strip around the bottom of the jacket was hidden by an extra layer of fake fur. Even the hat was a little bigger.
It wasn't perfect, but the little kids would never notice.
"See? All ready, and we've still got three days to make any more changes."
Two days later, Magneto arrived on schedule for the Thanksgiving feast. Toad braced himself for disaster. Wanda barricaded herself in her room, and refused to come out until "he" was gone.
Mystique tried to reason with her. (That was no small feat.) "No! I won't come out and pretend to be happy in front of that--" "That what?" "You know."
"No, I don't. Come out and talk to me."
"Not if he's here!"
"Wanda, you're being unreasonable!" "I'M being unreasonable?" Wanda was furious. "He's your father!"
"Well, tell him to act like one!"
"Santa to the rescue!" The suit was really going to Freddy's head. He leaned as close as he could to the crack in the door and whispered, "There's milk and cookies in it for you." That got Wanda's attention. "Okay," she said. "For milk and cookies. But they'd better be good cookies!"
By the time they sat down to dinner, things were a bit calmer. Toad, however, still braced himself for disaster. The Brotherhood did not do Thanksgiving well. Or any other holiday for that matter. He still shuddered when he thought about the time Pietro had tried to make a Hanukkah meal . . . .
********
"These pancakes taste funny," Fred said.
Pietro's jaw nearly scraped the floor. "FRED! Those were for tonight!"
"Whuh?"
"But you're kicking us out of the house tonight!" Todd pointed out. "You want to be alone so you can eat pancakes?" Pietro wanted to hit Toad in the worst way. "That's not why I want you guys out of the house." "Well, why, then? It's not like it's some big secret that you're Jewish! We'll stay out of your way! What?"
"You wouldn't understand," Pietro said. "Hey, Freddy, you gonna leave me some of those?"
"Huh?"
********
"I'm not sitting next to him, and that's final!"
So much for calm. "We don't have time for this, Wanda--" Tad was in his high chair, dressed in his big-boy suit (which would probably be covered in food by the end of the meal, but no one cared). Mystique had taken a little of the dinner and ground it up in the food processor. She was very proud of him. Today, Tad was the least of her problems.
The seating arrangement had to be adjusted so that Wanda and Pietro weren't sitting next to each other. But she couldn't put Toad between them, because his pathetic attempts at flirting made Wanda furious. She couldn't put Magneto on their side of the table, either, unless she wanted to listen to them argue all day.
In the end, she decided Magneto would sit at the head of the table. Going around to the right, it went: Lance, Pietro, Toad, Tad, Wanda, Fred, and then Mystique. This way nobody was next to anyone they didn't want to talk to. It had taken her six tries to get it right.
The only remaining problem now was that Fred insisted on wearing his Santa suit to the table.
"Don't you have something else that fits?" Mystique asked.
"I wanna get the feel of it, before I wear it for real tomorrow."
"What if you spill something on it?"
"It's washable!"
"I don't care! You're not wearing it!" As if she didn't have enough of a headache already.
"It's the only dress-up clothes I have!"
"I'll go make you some more!" Pietro offered. "I still have your measurements from before--"
He raced off and came back with a navy blue suit. "Took me a little longer than I thought. I was going back and forth--wide lapels? Thin lapels? Wide? Thin? Then I sort of came up with the idea to--"
Mystique grabbed the clothes out of his hands and thrust them at Fred. "Go change! Dinner's almost ready!"
Fred lumbered out of the room. Mystique went back to the kitchen. "It would be nice," she said loudly, "if I had some help in here!"
The limp bodies on the couch in front of the football game didn't stir an inch.
She decided to get a little more specific. "Lance, set the table. Toad, get your brother into the high chair. There's a bib in the top drawer. Wanda, help me put these dishes on the table."
Still no one moved.
"NOW!" Everybody moved then, like they were on fire.
Dinner went fine--apart from Wanda glaring at Pietro, and a minor argument erupting over the potatoes when Fred wouldn't pass them over to Lance. Then, just before the dessert, Wanda heard her father talk about grandchildren. It was only a passing remark, but it was enough to make her stand up and declare, "I am never having kids! Never! I'm not going to inflict more demon spawn on the world!"
"Demon spawn?" This caught Toad's attention. "Who's a demon?"
"Guess." Wanda's voice was like ice, and the look in her eyes was scary.
"I thik you're overreacting just a tad," Magneto said. Big mistake.
'OVERREACTING? YOU THINK I'M OVERREACTING?"
"Oh boy," said Toad. He dived under the table and made himself scarce. So did everybody else, except for Magneto, who remained locked in a battle of wits with his willful daughter.
Tad was still strapped into his high chair, and he hadn't yet figured out how to get out of it. "Gabee dah?" But Uncle Magneto and Auntie Wanda were too busy fighting to notice. They were yelling . . . and Tad didn't like yelling. "Nice going, yo," Toad grumbled. "You're making Tad cry." Wanda gave him a look that made him secretly want to run away,but nevertheless he stood firm.He told her and Pietro, "I don't know what your problem is, but you gotta work it out yourselves, yo. I mean, you're family! Families gotta stick together!" Apart from fathers who dumped their kids on their other kids' doorsteps, but he didn't count.
"I'm not sticking with anyone who let me get locked away in the loonybin!" "What do you mean, let you get locked away?" Magneto looked at her as if she were insane. "You know what I mean!" "Well I don't!" Lance said. Wanda got up from the table. "I don't feel like talking about it. I'm going to my room." Tad looked at Wanda. "Ahdee," he said. "Ahdee Babah." Wanda blinked in surprise. Was he trying to talk to her? "Ahgoo-ahgoo," Tad said.
"What did he say?" Wanda asked.
"I think he's trying to say huggle-wuggles," said Toad. Wanda stared at him. "Huggle-wuggles?" Tad reached up for her.
"Well . . . okay." She picked Tad up . . . It turned into a group hug before she knew it. "Toad!" she choked. "Get off me!"
"What? I wasn't touching you anywhere nasty!"
"All of you is nasty!" she shrieked, pulling away.
"Aw, c'mon, Wanda, I wasn't gonna hurt you . . ."
"I just don't like being touched, all right?" "Poh Ahdee Babah," said Tad. Toad was amazed. "Hey, he's talking!"
"He's always talked," Fred said.
"I mean really talking! Words we can understand, yo."
"How old is he?" Wanda asked.
"Uh . . ." The boys were looking away. "How can you not know how old he is?"
"Well, we kinda know, but not exactly. See, he was just dumped on our doorstep one day."
"Uh huh."
"I bet Santa knows how old Tad is," Fred said. "Why don't we ask him?" "Sada?" said Tad. "Uh . . ." Toad said, thinking fast. "Yeah! Fred, you can call Santa on the hotline or something and ask him, yo."
"Hotline?"
"You know . . . the one all the mall Santas have, so they can tell the real Santa what the kids want for Christmas?"
"Oh yeah!" "Are you staying for dessert, then?" asked Mystique. Wanda shrugged. "I guess so."
