The disclaimer found a needle inside a fun-size Mounds bar. Oops. Anyway, it's about time I threw the Brotherhood into a Halloween situation, so here goes. Also, you get a brief cameo from Reverend Foster, the Southern Baptist fanatic who appeared in "Heathens!", and being a spooky-fic, Agatha Harkness makes an appearance. Oh, and excuse the grammar.
It was a dark, cloudy day, and a gathering of people dressed in black gathered at a a cemetary, over an open grave. A smallish coffin sat next to the grave, ready to be lowered in. Reverend Foster stood near the grave, holding the Bible and speaking to those gathered. Among the gathering were four people closest to the deceased: Lance Alvers, dressed in a black suit and tie, stood with Fred Dukes, wearing a black suit that was a size too small for him. Wanda Maximoff was there as well, wearing a black dress, and next to her was her brother Pietro, wearing basically the same outfit he wore every other day, except he had a black tie which he had been forced to wear.
"This tie does NOT go with this outfit," he complained.
Strangely enough, the students of the Xavier Institute were there, though only Kurt Wagner, Jean Grey and Rogue wore black. Being the good, honest, sickening person she was, was only wearing black because it would be improper if she didn't. As for Kurt, the man in the casket was his sworn enemy, but he felt the need to honor his worthy rival, though he would never admit to having lost in battle to him. Rogue... she always wore black anyway. For reasons unknown, Mastermind also stood with them, holding a handkerchief.
"Did you ever even meet him?" Professor Xavier asked.
"No... but he was like a son to me..." Mastermind blew his nose.
"...Would you heathens like to say anything?" Reverend Foster asked in his thick Southern accent.
"He was weird, but he was an alright guy," Lance said. Fred and Wanda nodded behind him. "Toad was never ashamed of who he was, and took pride in his uniqueness. He could be obnoxious, but is antics brought a lighter mood into our house, when days could be dark and-"
"...he didn't always smell like an ox, may he rest in peace, blah blah blah. Put him in." Pietro had grown impatient with the entire ceremony. As the coffin was lowered, Fred burst into tears and began to cry on Wanda's shoulder, and she put her arm around him (or at least halfway, Fred's a big guy) to comfort him.
"...And he will BURN in Hell as all sinners do!" Reverend Foster announced, his eyes wide with fanaticism and raising his hands and shaking them. "Let his friends learn from his mistakes! They must repent and atone for their sins if they want to avoid the same fate!" Foster paused. "Oh wait, you're mutant demons! You will burn either way! HEED MY WORDS! THE WRATH OF GOD WILL BE SWIFT AND TERRIBLE! END YOUR LIVES BEFORE HE SMITES YOU!" Professor Xavier used his telepathic abilities to calm Foster down. "Ah... er... how now... brown... cow?"
The headstone read:
Todd "Toad" Tolensky
19??-20??
Friend and "Brother"
We Told Him Not To Eat That
"Who's this Tolensky jerk?" Pietro paused as the others gave him contemptful stares. "Crap, I forgot Toad had a name."
X-Men: Evolution
"Halloween Comes a Day Late and a Dollar Short"
King of the Worthless
Lance, Fred and Wanda walked through Bayville High after-hours with a flashlight. The only person they had encountered was Jim the Janitor, and he welcomed any intruders who would possibly destroy school property.
"Which one was his, 714 or 715?" Fred asked as he held the flashlight up to some lockers. Lance shrugged and Fred pulled both of them open.
"Oh, thank god!" said the little nerd who had once smiled at Lance and later befriended Evan, tied up and stuffed into locker 714. For the sake of the narrative, let's call him Doug. Doug was filthy and covered with cobwebs. "Duncan and his friends shoved me in here two weeks ago and nobody could hear me! It's funny, you guys would've shoved me in here too, and here you are rescuing me!"
"Funny? Do I look funny to you?!" Fred yelled.
"Come on, Fred, I already did that." Lance pulled Doug out of the locker and onto the floor, then inspected locker 715. It was quite possibly the most disgusting thing he had ever seen. "Argh... I'm not touching that. What kind of an idiot slimes his own locker like this?"
"Forget it, we need to get this," Wanda said. She hexed the slime into oozing off the walls and onto the floor, inadvertently covering poor Doug in Toad's weeks-old slime. A few books remained, a few old (and moldy) lunch bags, and then there was the item they had come for... a collection of wallets kept inside a stolen bookbag.
"Hey, sweet!" Fred said. "Look at all this stuff, bills, credit cards... a Blockbuster card! ATM cards!"
"We've hit the jackpot, and we owe it all to our dear old friend Toad!" Lance declared.
"Are you sure this is right?" Wanda asked. "He stole those from innocent people."
"...'Matthews, Duncan,'" Lance read off an ID card. "'Johnson, Meg,' 'Paur, Hank,' 'Gordon, Steve N. F.,'... hell, he even stole from this Stan Li jerk."
"Oh. They don't need any more money, then."
"...give them baaaaaaack..." a voice called from the darkness down the hall.
"Who said that?!"
"...GIVE THEM BAAAAAACK!"
"Er... what's going on here?"
"GIVE THEM BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!"
"Jim, stop that." Lance shone the flashlight on Jim the Janitor. With his fun ruined, Jim scowled and pushed his mop bucket elsewhere. "Okay. Let's get home and divvy up this loot."
"YAAAAAH!" Something jumped onto Lance's back and bit him in the neck. Lance grabbed it and threw it against the ground, and all three gasped when they saw it.
"...T-t-toad?!" Fred stuttered. "Buddy, you're alive!" Fred was quite mistaken. Todd's eyes had no pupils. In fact, one had no eyelid. Patches of his clothes were torn off and he was covered in flesh wounds. His skin was paler than usual and his teeth dark and almost black with filth, contrasted with Lance's bright blood dripping from his mouth.
"He's a zombie!" Wanda yelled. She raised her hands to hex him, but he jumped out of the way and knocked Lance to the ground with his powerful zombie-toad legs.
"Toad, come on, it's me, Lance! You left us all this stuff, it was in your will!"
"...not want money..." Todd replied in a dead, empty voice.
"Then what do you want?"
"...bbbbraaaaaainnssss... Braaaaaaaainssss... BRRRAAAAAAAAIIIIIINNNSSSSSSS, yo!" Fred pulled Zombie-Toad off Lance and threw him into his old locker and slammed the door. Zombie-Toad still mumbled inside.
"Guys, some help please?" Doug asked them as they ran. Lance rolled his eyes. Fred picked him up, shoved him back into the other locker, and shut the door. "Uh... thank you... I'm sure I'll get used to the smell of this slime... ugh... fumes pushing air out... aagghhh..."
--------------------
"...You expect me to swallow that tripe?" Pietro protested. He sat at the kitchen table with Fred and Lance while Wanda leaned against the wall with her arms crossed. Lance had a bandage around his neck.
"Yeah, it's all we have for dinner," Fred replied.
"Fine, but I won't like it. Now, what was this you said about a zombie Toad biting you?"
"I don't know what it was, but it looked a lot like a rotting Toad. Little fucker bit me, too."
"And you expect me to swallow that tripe?"
"Pietro, it's all we-"
"Quiet, Fred! Look, dead things don't move!" Pietro splattered a bug on the table in the blink of an eye. "See? It's dead! It doesn't move! It doesn't jump around, it doesn't talk, it DOESN'T BITE LANCE, it's DEAD!"
"We know what we saw, Pietro," Wanda told him. "Toad's come back, and he's after us... maybe we should have been nicer to him."
"Zombie or not, Toad was a weakling. Why are you all so afraid of him?"
"It might be the fact that he's the LIVING DEAD," Lance yelled. "I mean, he bit me! What's going to happen to me, am I going to turn into a zombie too? All monsters turn people into monsters when they bite them! Vampires, werewolves, zombies, mummies, Frankenstein..."
"Hrmph. You ladies can sleep together tonight and hope the big bad Toad corpse doesn't come to get you! I'm going upstairs to get some beauty sleep." Pietro left his plate of tripe untouched, turned his head away from them and lifted his chin with a "hmph!" and marched up the stairs.
"Toad took more out of me than some flesh," Lance muttered. "I'm going to bed, too." Once Lance had left the kitchen, Wanda and Fred exchanged nervous glances. A flash of lightning filtered through the window and illuminated the kitchen in eerie light for a brief moment.
"I've got a bad feeling about this," Wanda said.
--------------------
Wanda woke up to the distinctive sound of a wolf howl, very close to the house. Wearing a red nightgown, she quickly got out of bed and looked out the window, but saw nothing outside that was out of place. She shrugged and started to move back towards her bed when the wolf howled again. She looked outside once more. Wanda was startled by a sudden and loud knocking on her door.
"Wanda... you up?" Fred nervously asked.
"Yeah... what's going on?" she asked as she answered the door. Fred's face was paler than the sheets he carried with him. Something had spooked the hell out of the poor guy, who was wearing a blue robe that didn't quite fit him. "Are you alright?"
"Lance... h-he's..." Fred didn't finish his sentence. He was shaking and couldn't get the words out.
"He's what? Come on, Fred, snap out of it."
"...I'm coming for you, Freddy!" Lance said from the dark hallway, his voice gruffer and raspier than normal. Fred panicked when he saw two glowing yellow eyes and ran to Pietro's room.
"Pietro, wake up, we gotta get out of here!"
"Oh my God!" Wanda screamed. She had a flashlight and finally got a good look at Lance... or, what used to be Lance. "He's... he's..."
"What the hell do you want, Blob?!" Pietro yelled. Dressed in light green pajamas, he was quite grouchy when rudely awakened. "I was having that great dream again, the one where Evan... what the hell is going on here?!" Lance regarded them, standing to his full height. His clothes were torn to shreds and he was covered in thick brown fur, the same color as his hair. His feet were dog-like hind legs, a tail wagged behind him, and his arms had grown in bulk, ending in a pair of sinister looking claws.
"He's a werewolf!" Pietro took Wanda and ran down the stairs, leaving a poor scared Fred to fend for himself. Pietro quickly ran back for him, but found himself unable to lift him, shrugged, waved goodbye to him, and ran downstairs. Seeing that he couldn't outrun Wolf Lance, he turned around to face him. After all, nothing could hurt the Blob.
"He'll be alright," Pietro said to his sister as he rushed out of the house with her. "...But tell me, what's going on?"
"I don't know... Toad bit him... but Toad was a zombie... how did he become a werewolf?"
"I don't know, but it's not safe in there anymore. We need a place to crash until this all dies down... er, stops. I meant to say stops."
"C'mon, maybe Xavier will let us us stay at his place..."
--------------------
"Anyone home?" Pietro asked. The front gate of the Xavier Institute was wide open and all the defense systems de-activated. The front door was closed, but not locked. Wanda cautiously walked in and turned on the lights in the foyer.
"Whoa, someone trashed the place."
"Wanda... Pietro..." Bobby Drake crawled out from behind the stairs, covered in blood. He was missing his right leg and left a red trail where he dragged himself. "Get out... he'll get you..." And then a furry snout with long, sharp teeth grabbed Bobby's legs and pulled him behind the stairs again as he screamed and blood flew out onto the walls and floor.
"Yeah, let's get out of here," Pietro said. He rushed for the door, but it was blocked by Zombie Hank McCoy, covered in bite marks and missing his pupils. Pietro tried running up the stairs, but Zombie Logan extended his bloody claws and grinned. The rest of the Zombie X-Men appeared, blocking every possible exit. Several Zombie Jamies formed a circle around Pietro and Wanda as Zombie Xavier rolled towards them. Werewolf Lance clutched Bobby's arm, and soon Zombie Bobby hopped towards them.
"Join us..." Werewolf Lance growled. Zombie Kitty hung from his arm, literally. "You will be muuuch happpierrrr..." Pietro and Wanda zipped out the door. Zombie Hank looked up from his snack (Zombie Scott, a few feet away).
"...aaaargh..."
"You have faaaaaaiiiled..." Fred said to Zombie Hank as the others cleared the way for him. Fred was neither zombie nor werewolf. His clothes remained intact, and though he had heavy bags around his eyes and his pupils were missing, he otherwised looked completely normal... if you ignored the fact that he was a transparent glowing form. "...Eat his braaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiins!" Fred commanded in a ghostly voice.
"...i haaaaave noooo brraaaaaaiiiinsss..."
"...liiieeeeeeesssss you've beeeeeen hoooolding ooooouuuutttt on uuuuuuuussss..." Zombie Ororo said. The others closed in on poor brainy Zombie Hank. He sighed and accepted his brainless future. While the Zombie X-Men feasted, Ghost Fred flew through the mansion wall after Wanda and Pietro.
"Waaaaaaaaandaaaaaaaaaaa... Piiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetrooooooooooo..."
"Gah! He's a ghost! Pietro, we need to get out of here!"
"Yooooooooouuuuuu caaaaaaannoooooooooot leeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaave..."
"By the way," Pietro said to Ghost Fred, "I changed my name."
"Oooooooooooh... I didn't knoooooooooooooooooooooow thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat..."
"Yeah, I'm Grrrzzztttt..."
"Yoooooooouuuuu caaaaaaaaannoooooot ruuuuuuuuuuuun Grrrzzztttt... eeeeeer..."
"HA! You can only draw out vowels! You're still an idiot, Blob!"
"Will you stop taunting the monsters?!" Wanda yelled. "Now get us out of- GAAAAAH!" Pietro watched, shocked, as Ghost Fred became a mist that entered through Wanda's mouth.
"Oh man... Wanda is eating FRED! How does this crap happen?!" Wanda's skin glowed white and her eyes became red, and then Ghost Fred left her body. "Uh... you okay?"
"Come here, Pietro..." Wanda began to hover several feet off the ground and grinned at her... but this was not a normal grin. Her teeth had become longer and sharper. The glow of her skin had faded, but it had become pale, though there were shadows around her red eyes. "I just want to... SUCK YOUR BLOOD!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Pietro screamed and ran as fast as he could, knocking out windows and destroying cars as he ran down the street. He ran to the only place he knew he would be safe...
--------------------
Pietro trudged through the filthy Bayville sewers, covering his nose with his forearm and kicking away any rats that got too close. "Anyone home?" he called.
From the shadows, Caliban appeared. He was tall, thin, pale, and filthy. Pietro took a step back.
"...What are you doing heeeere?"
"I... oh no..."
"...Are you... sssssearching for something?"
"THEY GOT YOU, TOO!" Pietro screamed and ran. Caliban scratched his head and sighed.
"...They think I'm undead... they alwayssssss think that..."
--------------------
Pietro paced back and forth inside the run-down Bayville Cinerama downtown. The theater had been closed for years and nobody had gone in since then. The silence and darkness had bothered him, so he had managed to get the projector working and put in a very dusty copy of Gremlins.
"Okay, okay, what to do, what to do... it's two AM, Toad's a zombie, Lance is a werewolf, Fred's a ghost and Wanda's a vampire... Xavier and his goody-goods are zombies too, so they can't help... I have no idea where Magneto is... who am I going to turn to for help?"
"Me, possibly," said Agatha Harkness, who sat in the back row with a bag of popcorn.
"DON'T SCARE ME LIKE THAT?!"
"Calm down, boy, I mean you no harm."
"AFTER ALL I JUST SAID, YOU APPEAR OUT OF THIN AIR AND SCARE THE CRAP OUT OF ME AND YOU EXPECT ME TO BE CALM?!"
"I sensed trouble tonight. Your friend, he passed away recently?"
"Yeah, then he came back as a zombie. He bit Lance, Lance became a werewolf, Lance killed Fred, Fred became a ghost, Fred possessed Wanda, Wanda became a vampire, and now they're all after me!"
"A zombie biting your friend, and he became a werewolf, and then the werewolf killed your other friend and he became a ghost, and then-"
"I JUST SAID ALL THAT!"
"... yes, this is indeed trouble. Your deceased friend somehow gained the ability to transform his victims into monsters, and his victims have this ability as well... indeed, this is trouble."
"I KNOW THIS IS TROUBLE, HOW DO I STOP THEM?!"
"I told you to calm down, boy." Agatha took a book from her cloak and flipped through it. "Ah, let's see here... here we go, cross-monster transformations... it appears you must find the original one and burn him with sacred fire."
"So I've got to find Toad and burn him with sacr... WHERE AM I GOING TO FIND SACRED FIRE?!"
"I have some with me," Agatha said, holding a jar with a blue flame inside. "You may have it."
"Aw, thanks, lady! I-"
"...For fifty-six dollars."
"SON OF A BITCH! I DON'T HAVE THAT KIND OF MONEY ON ME!"
"Then I'm afraid you will continue to be stalked by your former friends until you can pay me."
"Look, my dad's got a lot of money, he'll pay you back, I swear!"
"I don't trust your father... oh, excuse me, I love this part." Agatha turned her attention to the screen and sang along with the characters on-screen. "'Hi-ho, hi-ho...'" Pietro stared at her. "Don't you get it, boy, it's funny! I'm sitting in an old movie theater watching an old movie about little creatures sitting in an old movie theater watching an old... oh, forget it, you kids don't know what's funny anymore."
"Yeah... listen, can you bill me or something?"
"No, but I can offer you an alternative payment plan."
"Uh... alternative?"
"Yes... come closer, boy..."
"N-no!"
"I'm not going to kiss you, you fool! Your mind is twisted and perverted! No, I desire another..." Agatha produced a photograph of Logan. "This is the one I seek... if you can arrange for us to meet, I will give you the sacred fire."
"Er... deal! Deal!"
"Here you are." Pietro took the bottled fire and dashed out of the theater. "Remember our bargain, young man, I know where you live!"
--------------------
"Gotta find Toad, gotta find Toad..." Pietro ran through the boarding house and searched every room. Finding it empty, he ran back outside. "Not home, not at school, not at Gut Bomb, not at the comic book store, not at the museum, not at city hall, not at the observatory, not at Duncan's house, not at the adult video store, not at Pancho Willie's, not at the old mill, not at the mall, not at the park, not at Home Depot... where the hell could that boy be?"
"Did you search... THE GRAVEYARD?!" Vampire Wanda floated down from the sky, now wearing her battle outfit. The grass on the lawn dried and fell limp as she walked across it. Her sharp teeth were bared and her red eyes grew wide with anticipation. "Come here, dear brother... don't you want to join us?"
"Yes... it's not so bad," Werewolf Lance growled behind Pietro, chewing on Zombie Amara's arm.
"Yooooouuuuu geeeet uuuuuuuuuused toooooo iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!" Ghost Fred screeched.
"...You overdid it," Werewolf Lance barked.
"Whaaaaaat?"
"Yeah, you just ruined the mood," Vampire Wanda said. "Way to be spooky, mood-ruiner."
"Er... yeah... hey guys, you haven't seen Toad anywhere, have you?" Pietro nervously asked. "I mean, I think I might consider this if I got everyone's opinion, you know?"
"He's got a point," Werewolf Lance growled. "Where IS Toad?"
"I thought you knew," Vampire Wanda replied. "Fred, you know where Toad is?"
"Nooooooooooo..."
"Cut that out already!"
"IIIIII WOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUULD IF IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUULD!"
"Hmm. Okay, did you guys check the school-"
"Forget it, I searched everywhere," Pietro said. "I can't find him." Without warning, a horde of zombies appeared around the house, including most of the X-Men and just about everyone from Bayville High. Pietro saw that there was no gap between the crowd for him to run through, not a single little gap. He had to face it... he was screwed.
Suddenly, one of the zombies stood up. It was Zombie Duncan, wearing his varsity jacket, except it was so drenched with blood that it was entirely red. He started snapping his fingers and moving to an unknown beat, and the other zombies tried their best to keep up, but some had rotted too much and fell apart trying to dance with Zombie Duncan.
"'CAUSE THIS IS THRIL-" Zombie Duncan then dropped before he could begin. Zombie Toad sat on the struggling corpse, biting into Zombie Duncan's head and ripping apart his brains in a spray of blood and flesh.
"...that was... my... number..." Once Zombie Duncan was out of commission, Zombie Toad approached Pietro. Part of his jaw was unhinged and the flesh covering the gap was gone. His gray tongue drooped out of his mouth like a snake, twitching as if it wanted to return to life. "...pietro..."
"Yeah?"
"...Pieeeeetro..."
"Toad, what?"
"PIEEEEETROOOOOO!" Zombie Toad laughed maniacally as the zombie mob closed in on Pietro. Pietro realized that if he didn't act quickly, he wouldn't get a second chance at stopping them, or doing much of anything except aimlessly marching around calling for brains. He opened the bottle of sacred fire and threw it at Zombie Toad. Immediately, he was engulfed in the blue flame and began to dance around in a panic, but the zombies kept approaching. Zombie Toad's burning flesh began to drip off and he was slowly becoming a walking skeleton, but soon his bones were consumed. Finally, he stopped moving and dropped to the ground as a pile of ashes, and the blue flame vanished.
...But the zombies were still coming.
"What?! But I killed the original monster, this should all be over!"
"...Or so you think!" Zombie Xavier yelled from the top of the boarding house. "...It appears that the original monster was not your young friend... it was you!"
"IT WAS ME ALL AL- wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense! I'm not a monster, I didn't kill Toad, that can't be right!"
"...What do you think this is, an M. Night Shyamalan film?! Does everything have to be spelled out for you? Let me guess, even THEN you won't grasp the obvious ending, despite being practically given the information and being pointed in the right direction! But you'll still be amazed by the ending because you were too stupid to see it coming!"
"Uh...?"
"...Then everyone thinks he's so great because of this movie, and he goes on to make lesser thrillers that fail to entertain us, but he is still considered a great director!"
"Come on lady, stop that!"
"I'm sorry. I really hated that movie." Agatha cleared her throat. "In any case, you are the original. It seems there is nothing you can do, except suicide."
"Are you kidding me?"
"No... did you notice that they have already pulled your legs off?"
"HUH?!"
--------------------
Emperor Palpatine woke up in a cold sweat. Quickly, the he jumped out of his luxurious bed and ran down the palace corridor to tell everyone about his dream.
"Wake up you fools!" Palpatine croaked. "I had a terrible dream!"
"What happened?" Darth Vader asked. Lord Vader never seemed to sleep; he was always there when Palpatine needed him. "Was it the one about the swamp skeeto again?"
"No, no! I was a teenaged boy, and I could move very fast, and I lived in a house with other teenagers who had similar talents, and then one of them died and then rose again, and hunted us down! It was terrible!"
"There there," Lord Vader said with his deep, mechanical voice. "I'll get you a glass of water and everything will be just fine."
"Yes... take the glass. Use it. Pour water for me with all of your hatred, and my journey towards refreshment shall be complete!" Palpatine rubbed his hands together and grinned. "Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design!"
"Even your nightmare?"
"Yes... well, it had to, how could something happen without my approval? Perhaps I have become so powerful in the Force that I have begun to experience strange nightmares... they frighten me... fear is the path to the Dark Side! Yes, these nightmares make me stronger! Stronger... WITH THE DARK SIDE!"
"I see bladder control was not with you."
"If you tell anybody, I will kill you, Lord Vader." Palpatine took a sip of his water, but for some reason, his Sith Lightning activated itself and Palpatine was electrocuted. Glancing around nervously, Vader picked up Palpatine's corpse, tossed it into a reactor shaft, and hoped nobody would notice his absence.
The End
Weren't expecting that ending, were you?