Like dr. Seuss on an acid trip
Author: Carla, aka cali-chan
Rating: PG. Though I'm wondering if the word "acid" on the title means I have to bump it to PG-13.
Genre: Crack. It's pure, pointless silliness.
Pairings: None really? There's Kurt/Wanda but just because it was there.
Canon/timeline: Fits into various points in season 1.
Disclaimer: I don't own Wolverine & the X-Men, Marvel does. I just borrow the characters and put them into the most ridiculous situations. You know, just the usual. Also, all the poetry used in this fic (except for that one about Genosha) was taken from a website, verybadpoetry dot com. All the credit to their respective owners (eh, if they actually want it... I can't imagine why anyone would wanna admit to being the author of this stuff...).
Warnings: ...Did I mention the absolute crackiness? I swear I mean no disrespect to any of the characters, this was all just for fun. xD Also, spoilers for the whole season.
Author's Note: For the andthexmen's Off-Season Fic-Off #4. Which means: this is all Kelly's fault! -grumbles- Oh, and also whomever gave her the prompt in the first place. Thanks to you two, my brain is now officially broken. D:
Summary: Lorna writes poetry, and wants to share it with the world. And the world suffers through it because she is Magneto's freakin' baby daughter. Lord have mercy.
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Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe.
The second worst is that of the Azagoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode To A Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning," four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own limbs off. Grunthos is reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled "Zen And The Art Of Going To The Lavatory" when his own major intestine, in a desperate bid to save the universe, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
The very worst poetry in the universe was written by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Sussex. Thankfully it was destroyed when the Earth was.
--Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, chapter 7.
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Kurt had never thought of himself as a "pop" kind of person, but he had to admit Dazzler's performance had been really fun. The girl wasn't only a really nice person, she also sang like the angels. And the light show that accompanied the concert (well, what else could they expect?) was beautiful. But more than anything, he was enjoying his present company. He shared a look with Wanda and grinned.
She smiled warmly at him. "Are you having a good time?"
He nodded. "Ja. It has been quite entertaining," he let her know.
She seemed satisfied by his answer. "Well, then I'm sure you're going to love what's coming up," she said. In any other tone, he would've taken that as an insinuation of something else, but she sounded quite literal and almost... proud?
He understood when the presenter took the microphone. Well, not really-- his mutant power was that he had a very loud, booming voice; he didn't really need a microphone. But that wasn't the point. "And now we are proud to introduce..." He paused for a second, blinked his eyes hard (at least that's what it seemed like from up in their balcony seats) and then took a deep breath. "...Our very own Lady Polaris, who is going to thrill us with her beautiful poetry!" His voice was nothing but pure enthusiasm, and Kurt had to wonder if he had imagined any hesitancy.
Wanda cheered as the presenter scurried offstage, and so did Kurt when the sweet young woman stepped on to meet her audience. You would think she'd be dwarfed, standing by herself in such a big place and surrounded by so many people, but between the lights and the big metallic screens that reflected her every move, the green-haired beauty seemed to command the stage well enough. She walked up to the microphone and smiled. "Good evening, everyone! Before we start I just wanted to thank all of you so much for your wonderful comments. I'm so very glad you like my poetry. I received so many requests for a second performance that I just couldn't say no! These next few pieces were written for all of you." She took a hand to her chest. "Genosha is my inspiration. So I really hope you all like these."
Well, she must be good, Kurt thought, by the way everybody applauded. Wanda looked like she was going to burst out of her skin with pride. Perhaps this would be the highlight of the night.
The young woman cleared her throat, and brought out a book from behind her back. "I call this... Birdi." She took a breath and, as if that dramatic pause wasn't ominous enough, she chuckled before actually starting to recite her poem. "I want to learn how to fly. It would be spectacular to just be free. Looking at my home from a distance. I tried to fly once..."
That's about the time when Kurt's tail started to twist itself into knots.
Dear God, it was horrible.
Never had he cursed his enhanced hearing so much. He couldn't block her voice out! Now, Kurt considered himself a romantic. As such, he believed that poetry, regardless of how inventive or how epic, was an expression of a person's feelings and for that reason, it should be respected. However, as the girl excitedly rhymed about everything from the flower pattern on her bedcovers, to despair that she obviously had never felt, to sheep, he had to wonder if perhaps his ears were bleeding. He certainly felt lightheaded; perhaps blood loss could explain that.
He briefly wondered what clever, subtle epithet his friend Kitty Pryde could come up with for this situation. He could almost hear her voice in his head: Gosh, it's like dr. Seuss on an acid trip! The Nightcrawler had to agree.
"Complete dust, tranquility. Damp untouched footprints..." She finished yet another poem-- if it could be called that-- with an obvious dramatic undertone, used to imprint emotion into it. It wasn't working. The crowd applauded again, but it was a much more muted applause than it had been initially. Dimly he thought that perhaps the pointlessness of it all had started to get to the audience as well.
He was baffled: how could anyone like this enough to go as far as to request a second performance? In fact, how could anyone like this, period? His stomach actually turned when she off-handedly mentioned she would now be presenting something a little different-- lately she'd been experimenting with haiku! He was dying here, and he'd only been listening sparingly. Hard to think anyone would give this show their full attention. So he started looking around at the people nearest to their balcony and started noticing the little details: there were quite a few of them that were squirming, like they couldn't find a comfortable position in their seat. Little kids were crying miserably. Some people had their headphones on. A few here and there were turned towards each other and involved in a conversation instead of paying attention. Oh, they all applauded when appropriate, but if he had to guess, he wasn't the only one feeling like he'd rather be anywhere else.
Hmm, was there any way for him to 'port out of the auditorium without Wanda noticing, he wondered? He snuck a look at her out of the corner of his eye, and he noticed she was completely focused on her sister's voice and form, a light smile on her face. Okay, so starting a conversation with her so as to find a distraction was out of the question, of course. Just his luck.
"...For Genosha is my home, and I so don't feel alone. Thank you very much!"
Has she just compared Genosha to a salad bowl somewhere in that last poem? Oh, nevermind. She waved at the crowd and walked offstage; Kurt thought he might cry in relief. It took him a few seconds to notice that there was no applause. It seems people had finally wound up stunned... either that, or the volume on their iPods was simply to loud for them to notice it was finally over.
No, wait, there was some applause. It was coming from right beside him.
Out of respect for his companion and her family (they were his hosts, after all), he respectfully joined in. Soon enough the rest of the auditorium had joined in, as well.
As they walked backstage so that Wanda could congratulate her baby sister, he got to see some people come up and express positive comments to the young poet-wannabe-- in fact, they had nothing but praise for her. Which was odd, because he was sure he had seen that one scaly green guy almost wailing in despair through Lorna's rendition of what she considered her masterpiece: "Ode to my Metal Table." Maybe the audience was feeling much the way he did-- Magneto had given then a safe haven, away from the dangers of the real world. For that, they could only be thankful. And if that implied being ridiculously supportive of his heiress' talent (or, honestly, the lack of it), then that's what they would do.
"So, what did you think? Isn't she talented?" Wanda asked him a while later, as they were taking a walk. She sounded so proud that Kurt almost choked.
A big, burly, tough-looking man with a messy beard and long dark hair was just walking beside them and, just happening to hear the Scarlet Witch's question, stopped a few feet behind her and gave Kurt a very pointed stare and an almost unnoticeable shake of the head. Nope, don't go there if you appreciate breathing, buddy. Looking like he'd rather piss his pants in public than be there when Kurt inevitably pissed off the red-clad woman, he quickly hurried off past them, having finished imparting wisdom for the night.
Kurt turned back to Wanda, whose neatly plucked, dark eyebrow now raised in a perfect arch let him know that perhaps he'd been staring past her for one second too long.
"Eh..."
Okay, how could he answer that question without completely decimating the possibility of him getting laid tonight? He sighed.
"It was... very... thought-provoking." Yes, provoking me to think about all the ways I can effectively kill myself, he added mentally, but of course he did not mention this aloud.
She seemed satisfied with that answer. She gave him another pleased smile and excitedly took his arm. They continued their stroll through the town. He thought that sure, he could live through a night of the worst poetry he'd ever heard if it meant he got to spend some alone time with this amazing woman.
But please, no encore performances...
--
Somewhere in the future...
"Hey, guys, look what I found!" Julian walked into the cave that was serving as their shelter, waving a round, silver thing in the air.
The rest of the rebel mutants looked up as he approached. "What's that?" asked Marrow, with a curious expression.
"It's a CD," Xavier explained as Julian handed him the device. Sarah was too young to remember that disks like these were widespread and common before disaster overtook the world. "It's a device used to store information." He was genuinely surprised any of these were still lying around. "Where did you find this, Julian?"
"Not too far from here," Hellion explained. "It was at the bottom of a pile of scrap metal that I managed to lift up. Might've been left behind by Sentinels, I guess. I think it may just still work. Think we should give it a try?" he asked, excited.
"It might be music," Bishop commented gruffly. "Been a while since there's been any music around."
Luckily for them, Julian and Vanisher had been tinkering with some electronic devices they had found here and there, in the hopes that they might come across something that could help in taking down Master Mold. One of these devices seemed like it could play the CD. They set it up and soon enough, they were hearing the dulcet tones of...
"O long metal table. Lurking in the center. Of a very small room!..."
Domino's eyes widened. "Oh no. Oh no, nononononononooooo..." she mumbled, shaking her head in desperation. She couldn't believe it: of all the things to have survived global destruction, it had to be this? For God's sake, bad poetry just would not die! It was like a cockroach! Ugh!
Vanisher's eye was twitching. "...What the heck is this?"
Xavier frowned. "That sounds like... Lorna."
Julian frowned. "Lorna? The crazy magnetic chick?" He whistled. "Well, we already knew there was something wrong with her head."
Domino, who had been the only one out of the group who had previously been subjected to this hideous thing Magneto and his offspring liked to call art, and the only one out of the group who knew that it could still get much, much worse, let out a wail and made a mad dash for the CD player. Unfortunately for her, she didn't quite know which button to press and so she only managed to raise the volume to the max and make it skip to the next track.
"Across the space between. Here and there, between. Now & then, between..."
"Someone please kill it!" exclaimed Vanisher, covering his ears, almost like he was in pain.
"Oh, I'm outta here," Bishop muttered and hurried out of the cave.
"Geez, Hellion, I knew you had bad taste, but this is too much!" Marrow said, then ran after Bishop.
"I didn't know it was going to be this!" Julian wailed back and rushed to help Domino figure out the buttons. In between the frantic twitching and the desperate weeping, she wasn't getting much accomplished on her own.
"Julian, just take it outside!" Xavier, always the voice of reason, was prompt to remind Hellion that he was telekinetic after all. He didn't have to even touch the thing to get it the hell away from them, pardon his language.
Julian dutifully tele-k'd the device as far as he could until the horrible verses could no longer be heard. The sudden silence (only broken by Domino's occasional shudders) made Xavier think. Perhaps Lorna's poetry samples were precisely what they needed to bring down Master Mold; surely any sort of intelligent machine could be short-circuited by such horrible nonsensical babblings.
Sadly, Julian was already telekinetically smashing a huge rock on top of the CD player. Repeatedly.
Well, there goes their one hope for survival.
--
Back in the original timeline...
Luckily, Kurt got out of Genosha just in time, for the guards of the "baaaad" dungeons (as opposed to the "pretty" ones) found the new "it" thing to use to torture their prisoners, like every mindless flunky of a narrow-minded, overpowered megalomaniac has to: I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count.
Random mutant flunky #1 leaned back his chair against the harsh stone wall and randomly chose a page from the photocopies one of the maids had smuggled him a few weeks ago. "This one is titled 'Mistake.'" He smirked evilly as wails of pure, unfathomable agony started to come out from the row of cells he was sitting by. Then he cleared his throat. "My life has changed. Everything has gone downhill. It's like a fire. It starts out small, spreads, and blows up in my face..."
Yes, Lorna's poetry. Now with 75 percent more emo (and even some gore) since she got dumped by that Gambit dude!
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Sometime later...
Wanda was still giving her father a harsh glare when she started speaking to her twin brother. "Pietro, you're welcome here... but this is no longer Father's kingdom."
The speedster, as was his nature, did not think about it for more than a second. He moved to stand beside his father. Wanda did not even bat an eyelash at this; she knew all along that Pietro would stick with his father no matter what. Without Magneto, he was nobody. She was sorry it had to be this way, but she had expected it.
Erik regarded his eldest daughter with sadness. "Wanda... don't do this."
Wanda's expression remained steely as she started to walk away. Lorna tried her best to keep a similarly guarded expression, as she turned around to follow her sister. Magneto shifted his attention to her. "Lorna... not you, too." The green-haired beauty glared at him over her shoulder for about second, but could not hold it. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then continued walking, sadly.
Pietro glared at her. An idea came to him and in a millisecond he had moved to stand in front of his youngest sister, in the way between her and Wanda. "By the way, little sis?" He smirked at her and mischievously leaned in. "Your poetry sucks."
There was an audible gasp that came from the audience of mutants that were witnessing the moment. To say that to the Lady Polaris, and to her face! Wanda glared even harder at Pietro (if such a thing was possible), and little bursts of red electricity started appearing around her. Lorna was shocked for a minute, then tears started pooling in the corner of her eyes.
Pietro smirked once more, and quickly zipped back to his father's side. However, he was not received with the satisfied expression he was expecting-- Magneto instead threw him a very disapproving glare. "What?" he asked, defensive. "They're kicking us out! We have every right to be angry jerks."
The master of magnetism only shook his head at his son's stupidity.
Wanda put a comforting hand on her younger sister's back, and looked over her shoulder at one of her mutant companions. "Blink," she said simply. The pink-haired mutant knew what to do.
As Blink readied to transport the two men away, Magneto turned to her with a self-righteous expression. "Please do send us to different places," he requested, nose up in the air, pointedly ignoring Pietro. "There is nothing I want less than to spend my exile with this... idiot," he finished with disdain.
Pietro gaped at him; however, anything he was about to say was cut off when Blink fired her javelins at them. They disappeared. Whether or not they wound up together, nobody knew.
Wanda sighed and hugged her sister with one arm. "Don't listen to him, sweetie. You know he's just being his usual spiteful self." All eyes were on the two women. Lorna was still sniffling, hurt by her brother's words, but she nodded bravely. "Come, now. We'll go back home and you'll show me all your new poems. In fact, why don't we have a poetry session tonight? I'm sure everybody would love to hear your latest." She turned to look at the mutants around her. "Don't you all?"
A chorus of "yeah, sure's" and "that sounds good's" that probably would've sounded half-hearted to more receptive ears, broke out among those who were present. That seemed to cheer Lorna up a bit; she gave her sister a thankful smile. Wanda held her tighter for a second and then led her back to their home, Blink following close behind the two.
As soon as they were out of sight, a large number of people began repeatedly banging their heads against every available hard surface.
One of them, a woman who had been standing relatively close to the action, groaned out loud. "We should've said something. It was the perfect opening!"
A man with light blue hair who was sitting on the sand near her shook his head emphatically. "No way. Even when Magneto's not here, that's still his freakin' little princess." He rolled his eyes. "None of us is gonna have the balls to tell her it's the truth."
The woman sighed. "You're right. We're such cowards..."
Young Sammy strayed away from his mother's vicinity to commiserate. "If only we were brave, like the X-Men... I bet one of them could tell her that we don't really like her poetry." He shuffled his feet on the sand, disappointed in himself.
A big, burly, tough-looking man with a messy beard and long dark hair that was standing behind him snorted roughly. "Shyeah, right," he muttered to himself.
The desperate head-banging continued on for a long while.
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Author's Note: Was Sammy even there in the last episode? Well if not, whatev, he's there now. BTW, the quote at the top is actually a mix between the quote in the book and the quote in the movie. Just wanted to mention it, to be accurate.