A Chance Encounter, a care bears fanfic

A CHANCE ENCOUNTER

A/N: This is an odd one-shot I've meant to do for a while. Some of you might be aware from my earlier stories that I wrote a number of Care Bear fictions before moving onto Red Witch's Misfitverse in X-Men: Evolution. I fell in love with Red Witch's stories and characters and so decided to take a brief hiatus from the Care Bears. That brief hiatus all too soon grew into semi-retirement until a good friend recently got me off my rear and got me to return to my roots for a bit. Don't worry, I'm not going to stop writing for Misfitverse, but I thought I'd honor the two series I've worked with at once. Mariel, Red Witch, RogueFan: This is for you guys.

I'm not sure that anyone familiar with my Care Bear stories will understand the X-Men portion or that anyone familiar with my X-Men stories will understand the Care Bear parts. Ah well, fair's fair after all.

Hope you like it just the same.

&&&

Bright Heart Raccoon was busy tinkering with what had been a toaster in the Hall of Hearts when Soulful Heart Fox walked in.

"Hey, Soulful. I haven't seen you around in a while." The ever reclusive fox had proven even more reclusive than usual of late, hardly poking his head out of his home for nearly a week.

"I've been…preoccupied." Soulful admitted.

"I can understand that." Bright Heart agreed as he adjusted something on the toaster,

"I doubt that." Soulful thought skeptically but held his peace. "I actually have had some…trouble of late."

"Oh. Anything you want to talk about?"

"If I knew who to talk to," Soulful said. Bright Heart looked hurt. "No offense Bright, but this is kind of hard to relate to."

"I understand. Well, maybe you can clear your head for a bit by going on a mission." Soulful made an incredulous snort. His dislike of missions was extraordinary. All too often they were over issues that Soulful denigrated as trivial in nature and compared to the life Soulful had as the creation and slave of No Heart, most of them were.

Still, Soulful couldn't think of anything else to do in this situation and he desperately wanted to clear his head for a bit, so he nodded. "All right, see you around Bright. I'll take the Rainbow Rescue Beam down."

Bright Heart grinned. Soulful couldn't drive the cloud cars to save his life. "I'll start up the beam."

&&&

Soulful Heart blinked as he rematerialized down on Earth. "I'll never get used to that." Soulful shuddered. He looked around and found himself in what looked like a girl's room.

"At least it isn't pink." Soulful muttered. In fact the whole place had a vaguely Goth feel to it. Somehow, he didn't mind it that much.

Soulful was startled when the door opened. A girl walked in. She was wearing her pajamas, clearly intent on going to bed and had green eyes and brown hair with white bangs. She blinked in amazement when she saw Soulful.

"What the hell are you?" She asked with a Southern accent.

Soulful winced at her tone though she could hardly blame her.

"Hi. I'm a Care Cousin, the name's Soulful Heart Fox."

"I'd say the pressure had finally gotten to me, but you're milder than most of the stuff I've had to put up with." She blinked again.

"Uh, thanks…" Soulful said unsurely. It was a hard comment to respond to. "Listen, I was sent here because you've been having some problems in your life and I'm here to talk to you about them." Of course, Soulful thought in annoyance, it would've been helpful if the mission brief had included the girl's name or specifically what her problem was. All it said was some vagaries about fitting in and social problems.

"So, since I already introduced myself, how about you tell me your name?" Soulful said.

"You're supposed to help me, yet you don't even know my name?" The girl asked skeptically. Soulful could hardly blame her.

"Well…" The girl rolled her eyes.

"You can call me Rogue. Everyone does."

"Okay, um, Rogue. So…you've been having some trouble fitting in?"

"Yes." Rogue said tersely. "Yes I have."

"Have you tried talking to people? Making new friends?"

"Not really. All the torches and pitchforks are kind of distracting." Rogue drawled. Soulful hoped she was kidding.

"Is there anyone here you're close to?" Soulful had read that this was some sort of boarding house.

"I can't get close to people without them dying." Rogue said with a touch of bitterness. "If I could I wouldn't be here."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because it's true." Soulful thought he saw the problem.

"Are you afraid to reach out to others because you lost someone close to you?" Soulful suggested.

"No…I don't get close to people because I hurt them." Rogue snapped.

"Oh." Soulful flinched. "Well, maybe there are things about you we can work on so you don't end up hurting the ones you love."

"You really don't know who you're talking to, do you?"

"Not really, no." Soulful admitted, unable to lie.

"And here I thought foxes were supposed to be clever." Rogue grumbled as she rubbed her forehead. "I'm a mutant."

"Oh…" Soulful gulped. "Note to self: kill Brave Heart for forgetting to tell me that!" Soulful thought to himself in annoyance. He just spent the last five minutes making an idiot out of himself. "Well I guess that does make the social awkwardness and isolation more understandable."

"Ya think?" Rouge snapped. "It's bad enough I can't ever even touch another person, but knowing that I'm going to spend my life a virgin is even worse!"

"Um…" Soulful blushed crimson. This really wasn't something he wanted to dwell on.

"I drain and absorb the energy, the experiences, and the memories of anyone I touch—even if only for a second. Kinda makes it hard to get real close and chummy, doesn't it Mr. Hugs-a-Lot?"

"All right, all right!" Soulful Heart said impatiently. "I get your point."

"Yeah right." Rogue rolled her eyes. "I sincerely doubt it."

"Is that right?" Soulful snorted in growing anger.

"What would you happy-sunshine types no about what it's like for mutants like me?" Rogue demanded, poking Soulful in the stomach.

"All right, I'll tell you what I know!" Soulful snarled, angry beyond tact. "First off, my nickname back in Care-a-Lot is 'Snarky Heart Fox,' which should tell you a lot about just how 'happy-sunshine' I am! I'm not even a real Care Cousin! I was made by a demented sorcerer! My mother was a real fox and he ripped me from her womb as remade me in a cauldron as part of some twisted experiment to create an anti-Care Bear!

"I spent the first part of my life as his slave and then spent the next in hiding! When I finally got to Care-a-Lot, I became known as the family freak! I'm the one who can't fit in with those goody two-shoes. I can barely even stand the place myself sometimes! Hardly a day goes by where I don't want to wallop someone with a skillet! I'm as much a mutant as you!"

Soulful was barely aware that he had raised his voice into a near-shout until he finished, breathing heavily and glaring at the Goth teenager, somewhat amazed at himself for revealing what was his most personal secret, his darkest demon. Rogue seemed taken aback by Soulful's admission, but not particularly cowed.

"You think that's bad?" Rogue asked. "Listen to this: I was born as part of an experiment too. My father is Magneto, a mutant supremacist terrorist who makes our lives a living hell and ran experiments on me, giving me super strength, invulnerability, and the ability to fly. He has three other kids, my half-siblings: Wanda; a powerful psychotic witch girl with anger problems who spent a chunk of her life in a mental ward and has the power to hex things and screw with probabilities, Pietro; a hyperactive, prissy, immature little albino hummingbird who delights in driving me crazy and used to hit on me before he found out we were related, and Lorna; who bends metal just like her dad and still works with Magneto to ruin us."

Soulful blinked in astonishment, but Rogue wasn't done yet.

"…And my mother's side is even worse! My mother is Mystique, she's a blue shape-shifting mutant terrorist who worked for Magneto. I was born out of an experiment where I was placed in a surrogate mother named Destiny while Mystique went and 'adopted' me when I was four, not that she told me any of this. She tricked me into joining her lackeys in the 'Brotherhood of Mutants' and nearly killed my friends when I found out the truth. Then she posed as a girl at school, pretending to be my best friend. She keeps using me in all her plots, brainwashing me, kidnapping me, the works!"

"Gyaah!" Soulful gaped.

"And the affairs she has!" Rogue ranted. "Yeesh! She's slept with Sabertooth—a psychotic feral mutant—and had a son with him who is—ironically—Graydon Creed, a human who hates mutants and founded the Friends of Humanity, the largest anti-mutant organization out there! So I've got him as a half-brother too! She also slept with Zartan, the leader of the Dreadnok mercenaries and bore him a son—yet another half-brother—she had to give up to prevent a bunch of ninjas from killing it. And Zartan himself has another daughter—from another woman—named Zanya who's a first-rate pain in the rear.

"Mystique also slept with a British secret agent named Matt Burke who turned out to be Azazel—a demon lord from another dimension—and had a son, my half-brother Kurt, who also lives here. He's an annoying teleporter who can't stop 'porting in on me at the worst times and acting like an overprotective pest of a brother! Of course Azazel also has about fifty other demon children in another dimension who try to take over the world! And Mystique also slept with my surrogate mother who raised me."

"You win." Soulful blinked. Rogue crossed her arms in a look of triumph.

"Do you want to here about my boyfriend, the ex-member of the Thieves Guild and his broken off engagement to the head of the Assassin's Guild?" Rogue asked.

"Thank you, no." Soulful winced. "And I thought I had it bad."

"You do." Rogue said bluntly. "I just happen to have it worse."

"This isn't a contest." Soulful said peevishly.

"Good, because I don't particularly don't want to win it." Rogue countered as she sat back down on her bed and sighed. "We hardly ever leave the Institute anymore, everyone in town hates us for being mutants. We're banned from just about everywhere anyway."

"You know," Soulful sighed. "If any other Care Bear or Cousin were here they'd tell you that your life isn't so bad, that you've got people who care about you and that if you just be true to yourself, others will come around and like you too."

"Its being true to ourselves that make people hate us in the first place." Rogue snorted. Then she paused as she heard what he actually said. "And what would you say?"

"I'd say that you have some justifiable issues and that it sucks to be you." Soulful said honestly. He couldn't lie to save his life. "But you do have friends and the ability to beat up anyone who gives you trouble so it isn't all bad."

Rogue chuckled. "Thanks. That's actually better advice than I would've expected from someone who looks like a four-year old's talking plush toy."

"And you made me feel better about my self which is pretty hard to do. And thanks for being a teenager who actually HAS real problems. Do you know how many whiney kids I have to talk to in the course of my job?" Soulful asked rhetorically. "Oh no! I don't have a date for the dance! What ever will I do?!" He gaped dramatically in a falsetto voice, clasping one hand to his head. Rogue laughed.

"Hey, us angsty types have to stick together." Rogue smiled.

"Better than if the vapid types get together," Soulful shuddered. "You're lucky Cheer Bear didn't come instead of me."

"Is she pink?"

"And how."

"Erg."

"Exactly." Soulful nodded.

"She sounds like Kitty." Rogue commented. "She's just like, you know, totally valley girl and some junk?" Soulful shuddered at Rogue's impersonation. "I take it she's not a friend of yours?"

"Nah. My best friend up there is Bright Heart Raccoon, more of the sciency-inventor type. Know what I mean?"

"Yeah, we've got a guy like that here at the Institute too, his name is Forge. He's actually something of a dope: Can't fix a toaster without sending us all into another dimension or something. Always inventing the most pointless gadgets in the universe."

"I guess I shouldn't invite Bright Heart to him." Soulful winced.

"He like that too?" Soulful gave a wry grin.

"Let me tell you about the time he—" And they were off, trading stories about their friends and teammates and their—in Rogue's and Soulful's opinion—numerous foibles. It was about one in the morning when Soulful looked at the clock and realized that he better get going.

"Maybe I'll stop by again sometime." Soulful said. It was rare that he met anyone on a mission that he would keep in regular contact with, but this Rogue seemed like a kindred spirit.

"Bring your friends." Rogue said. "There's enough traumatic experiences and fragile egos in the Xavier Institute alone to keep you all busy for months. Just ask our psychiatrists."

"I'll be sure to mention that." Soulful snorted as he headed out the door. "Thanks again. I think I took more away from this than you did."

"Go on, get out of here. A girl needs her beauty sleep." Rogue yawned.

"I'll say." Soulful muttered loud enough for Rogue to hear as he walked out the door. He grinned as he heard a pillow thump against the door as he closed it behind him.

Soulful headed down the hall of the Institute and paused when he heard a growl come from behind him. He gulped as he turned around and found himself face to face with a red-furred dog, no—strike that—wolf.

"Ah, you must be Wolfsbane, right? Rahne Sinclair?" Soulful chuckled weakly as he recalled Rogue mentioning the younger mutant girl whose power was to transform into a wolf. "Um, I don't know if you're familiar with The Fox and The Hound, but basically I'm sure that we can come to some sort of understanding—"

"GRRRR." Rahne snarled, baring her teeth. Soulful gulped.

"Oh, snap."

THE END

A/N:

Hope you all enjoyed the story!

Soulful Heart Fox: I didn't! Get this crazy wolf away from me::Is still being chased by Rahne:: AAHHH!!!