" . . . And lose the name of action. - Soft you now, The fair Ophelia! - Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered."
" . . . be all my sins remembered. Jubilee, have I lost you?" Hank queried, glancing from his dog-eared copy of "Hamlet" towards the zoning girl.
"Huh? Oh, sure." She turned back to him.
"Jubilee, how I am to prepare you for your English class if you are forever looking elsewhere?" the furry doctor asked with a sigh.
She shrugged, then scowled. "This stuff is so . . . weird! I don't get it."
"You need merely to put all of your rapt attention on it."
"But H-hank! It's -Shakespeare-! Can't I, like, just watch Mel Gibson as Hamlet?" She gave him the puppy eyes. He hated the power of the puppy eyes.
"As lovely as his performance was, Jubes, you must still learn the text." Hank sounded adamant.
Jubilee huffed and snapped her gum, shifting in her relative slouch in the recliner. She held her newer publication of "Hamlet" at arm's length, peering at the words. She muttered about English class, and Miz Frost, and how she'd rather be at the mall with Ev and Ange, but -nooooo-, she had to study some old English dude that wrote funny.
"I heard that," Hank said dryly. "Will you pay attention now?"
"Sure," Jubilee replied.
" . . . be all my sins remembered." Hank started again.
"Good my lord," Jubilee said in a monotone. "How does yer honor for this many a day? What the hell does that mean?"
"She's asking how he's doing, Jubes." Bobby grinned as he walked in, hands tucked into the pockets of his khaki shorts.
Jubilee gave him a mock-surprised look. "You actually know this baloney? There goes your rep for being a smart-ass."
"Shh, don't tell anyone. Hey Blue, retaining sanity?" He plopped down on the couch beside Hank, peering over his broad shoulder at the "Hamlet" clutched in one furry hand.
"Always, Bobby. Fair Miss Lee thought to employ my relative security in Shakespeare to deliver her from a failing grade in her English class," Hank replied.
Bobby fairly beamed. "Can I help?"
"You?" Jubilee snorted. "I asked Hank for a reason, Snowball."
"Just gimme the book, squirt, or I'll freeze your Pokémon knickers. HEY!" He ducked as she lobbed her "Hamlet" at his head.
"You said you wouldn't tell!" she accused.
Bobby hung over the back of the couch, flailing around to grab the formerly airborne book. "You never paid me my five bucks."
"So what?!"
He righted himself, grinning. "All secrets are surcharged five bucks, or I get to tell. You never paid, so there." He punctuated that statement with a raspberry in Jubilee's direction.
"Jerk."
"Tart."
"Dork!"
"Hussy!"
Hank sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Robert, Jubilation?"
"Sorry, Hank."
"Stopping now."
"Good," Hank straightened his shoulders. "Shall we continue?"
"Where were ya, Blue?" Bobby asked, opening the book and paging through it.
"Act 3, Scene 1, lines 90 through 93."
"I get to be Ophelia?" Again came the sunny grin, this time directed towards his best friend with the blue pelt.
"Go sick, Drake." Jubilee smirked, snapping her gum again.
"Good my lord," Bobby started in a falsetto. "How does your honor for this many a day?"
"I humbly thank you, well, well, well." Hank tinted his tone with a slightly 'off-his-rocker' attitude.
"My lord, I have remembrances of yours, that I have long-ed to redeliver." Bobby looked up at Hank, batting his eyes. "I pray you, now receive them."
Hank sniffed. "No, not I. I never gave you aught."
Bobby feigned a surprised blink, keeping with his falsetto. "My honored lord, you know right well you did, And with them words of so sweet breath composed, as made the things more rich. Their perfume lost, take these again, for to the noble mind, rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind." Bobby reached into his pocket and held a mangled Twinkie out to Hank.
Hank's broad, furry face split into a too-wide grin. "Ha, ha! Are you honest?"
"My lord?" Bobby blinked again, the hand holding the Twinkie gone limp.
"Are you fair?" Hank leaned over towards Bobby.
Bobby scooted away a little, his falsetto wary. "What means your lordship?"
"That you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty."
Jubilee giggled at that, chin propped in her hand while she watched them.
Tentatively, Bobby replied. "Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than honesty?"
Hank smiled and sank back against the couch. "Aye, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof." He leered at Bobby. "I did love you once."
That line received another giggled from the entranced Jubilee in her recliner.
"Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so . . ." Bobby's lower lip quivered a little. Jubilee burst into a new set of giggles with that, and he turned and shot her a smile.
"You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish it. I loved you not." A haughty tone colored Hank's voice this time, and he looked away from Bobby.
Bobby sighed mournfully. "I was the more deceived."
"Get thee to a nunnery," Hank spat. "Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to put the--"
"Whut in tarnation?" exclaimed Sam Guthrie, blinking and stopping in his tracks as he entered the rec room.
"They're learning me some Shakespeare," Jubilee grinned. "Come and listen, it's funny."
"All Ah heard wuz Doc McCoy proclaimin' he doesn't love Bobby here." He grinned at the aforementioned duo. "Keepin' secrets?"
"Why, Mistah Guthrie! How churlish of ya to say such things!" Bobby twittered, pretending to fan himself.
"Ours is a forbidden love," Hank nodded.
"Wull, the things ya find out." Sam grinned again.
"Heyuck," Jubilee added, with a saucy smirk.
Sam turned to Jubilee, a hurt look on his face. "Ah don't say that anymore."
"Sure, right, and Betsy's not a--" Jubilee started.
"Shush!" All three men hissed. Jubilee blinked and sat back, accommodating them with dropping the Betsy subject entirely.
"Ahem," Hank cleared his throat. "With more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery." He waved a hand at Bobby, then looked at him. "Where's your father?"
Meekly, Bobby replied, "At home, my lord."
Hank snorted. "Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in's own house. Farewell."
"O, help him, you sweet heavens!" Bobby looked heavenward, the Twinkie-bearing hand reaching upwards with his demand.
Hank sneered at his 'Ophelia'. "If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice--"
"That shouldn't be hard," Jubilee whispered to Sam.
"--as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery. Go, farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell."
Sam whispered back to Jubilee. "Whut's 'calum'y' mean?"
She shrugged. "Ya got me."
"O heavenly powers, restore him!" Bobby wailed to the ceiling, flailing his Twinkie around helplessly.
Hank pointed at Bobby. "I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and you lisp; you nickname God's creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad." He favored Bobby with a maniacal grin. "I say we will have no more marriage. Those that are married already-- all but one --shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go."
And with one final rude gesture at Bobby, Hank stood up and walked out of the rec room. Bobby promptly burst into a round of obviously fake tears.
"O, what a noble mind is here o'verthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword, Th' expectancy and rose of fair state, the glass of fashion and mould of form, th' observed of all observers, quite, quite down! And I, of ladies--"
A giggle from Jubilee mixed with a snorted chuckle from Sam at Bobby's falsetto babbling interrupted his reading. He shot them an indignant look. The younger former X-Men hushed.
"--And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, that sucked the honey of his music vows, now see that noble and most sovereign reason like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh, that unmatched form and feature of blown youth blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me t' have seen what I have seen, see what I see!" He crumpled over on the couch, smushing his Twinkie under his chest. He immediately sat up and stared in shock at the Twinkie, now so much mashed golden snack cake stuck to the plastic wrapper with cream.
"Alas, poor Twinkie! I knew him Guthrie; a snack cake of infinite jest, of most excellent cream filling. He hath filled my tummy a thousand times. And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those rounded cakes I have nibbled I know not how oft--" Bobby proclaimed sadly.
"Drake," Jubilee interrupted. "It's just a Twinkie."
"Just a Twinkie?!" he blinked at her.
Hank's head popped out from around the doorframe. "Just a Twinkie? Have all the pertinent knowledge, creeds and ethos of the magnificent Twinkie we have forced upon you dribbled from your head?"
"Guys, it's just. A. Twinkie!" she gestured with her hands, looking between them.
Hank looked at Bobby.
Bobby looked back at Hank.
"Get her!" they cried.
"AIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!"
"Wait for me to move!" Sam wailed, scrabbling to get away from the charge of the outraged Dynamic Duo. He barely managed to escape before the recliner, bearing Jubilee, Bobby, and Hank, toppled over.
"Eat it!"
"You can't make me!"
Hank bellowed over them both. "You'll eat it, and you'll like it missy!"
"HELP!"
Sam doubled over laughing, watching the struggle from his vantagepoint on the floor. Ororo and Scott peeked in the room, each with an eyebrow raised.
"Samuel . . . ?" Ororo asked, peering down at him.
"'s Hamlet, Storm." He grinned widely at her.
Scott looked at the battling trio, catching the moment where the maligned Twinkie flew into the air, having been finally batted away by Jubilee. "Take that!" she crowed with triumph.
"Dive for it!" Bobby shouted.
"I got it!" Hank asserted, diving free from the recliner and landing with a 'whuff!' on the floor, his practiced football player's hands catching the desiccated snack cake.
Bobby jumped to his feet, fists raised to the ceiling. "GOAAAAAAAAAL!"
Jubilee took that time to get to her feet and run like a white boy in the ghetto out of the room. She was practically a flash of gaudy colors, racing between Scott and Ororo. She cackled in glee as she escaped her tormentors.
"Rats," Hank said with a sigh. "Thwarted."
Bobby patted his friend's shoulder. "We'll get her next time."
Sam, meanwhile, was choking down air between laughs, wiping his eyes. Scott was staring at them while 'Ro was just shaking her head, not about to ask what lead up to the theatrics.
Scott finally let out an explosive sigh, throwing his hands up. "I'm not going to ask." He started away from the rec room, muttering to himself.
Hank and Bobby beamed an angelic smile at Ororo. She smiled back and followed after Scott. The duo looked at Sam, who had managed to control himself.
"We have an apprentice, my Master." Bobby said in his best Darth Maul voice.
"Indeed, so it appears, my Padawan." Hank nodded. They both looked at Sam, a gleam in their eyes, matching grins on their faces.
Sam's eyes went wide.
"GET HIM!" They leapt at the off-guard Guthrie.
"NOOO!" he screamed.