Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig

"Look, I already said I'd join your secret mutant support group or whatever," Forge gulped nervously. "I had to considering you threatened my family, which by the way is so not cool. And I promised to invent and develop any new technology you wanted. And you even admitted that I may have done you a favor by inventing the time machine those other mutants accidently activated so would you please let me down?"

"Not until you finish listing and explaining every device you have ever invented or worked on until now," Magneto said as he used his powers to suspend Forge upside-down having wrapped thin pieces of scrap metal around his ankles. "Especially any you have developed for the military or Xavier…"

Suddenly, there was a pop and whoosh of air as the five absent Acolytes appeared in the lab. "Did it work?" Piotr asked hopefully. "Are we finally back?"

"How should I know? My senses are scrambled and I'm facing a bare wall," Sabertooth grunted disorientedly. "But it does look kinda familiar…"

"Huh?" Magneto turned to them in surprise. "You lunatics are alive? Darn…I mean, good."

"Mags?" Pyro blinked at him. "MAGS!"

"For the last time, don't call me…gaaahhhhhh!" Magneto yelped as Pyro, Remy, and Mastermind tackled him with hugs.

"Ahhh!" Forge fell to the floor as Magneto lost his concentration. "Ow, I'm okay. I landed on my head."

"Great to see ya, Mags!" Pyro chirped happily while giving Magneto a one-armed hug. "Wow, there's something I never thought I'd say."

"It's you! It's really you!" Mastermind sobbed uncontrollably. "Good ol' angry, impossible-to-please Magneto! We missed you so, so much!"

"It worked! Thank goodness, it worked!" Remy wept in joy. "We're back! We're finally back!"

"GET OFF ME YOU IDIOTS!" Magneto roared shoving the three babbling mutants away from him. "What the heck has gotten into you fools? Where the devil have you been?"

"Where haven't we been?" Sabertooth grunted. "Or when for that matter."

"Uh, that is a long story," Piotr sighed in relief. "We will tell you all about it later."

"Well, maybe not all of it," Remy coughed brushing himself off and recovering his composure. "So, happy to see us, Mags?"

"I just told you, don't call me…huh?" Magneto blinked getting a good look at the Acolytes' appearances. "Gambit, why are you wearing a new coat? Colossus, when did you start wearing an old coat? Sabertooth, what the heck are you wearing? Forget that. Mastermind, what are you wearing? Where did you maniacs get all those strange clothes?"

"Like Colossus said, it is a long story," Mastermind groaned. "Let's just say I had little choice in choosing my current ensemble."

"I would hope so. You look ridiculous," Magneto snapped. "I can't believe Pyro is the most reasonably attired one of you lunatics for once…what the?" Magneto did a double-take at Pyro. "Is that a dodo?"

"Yep!" Pyro beamed proudly cuddling the young dodo in his arms. "Mags, meet Pippi! Pippi, meet Mags!"

"Do-doh! Py-roh!" Pippi cooed.

"Whaaaaaa?" Magneto gaped.

"Hey, far out!" Forge said getting to his feet. "That's so totally trippy, man! I told you I invented a real, working time machine."

"You got the 'real' part right," Remy glared at him darkly. "'Working' is another story."

"Looks like you put quite a few miles and years on it," Forge commented. "Mind if I run some diagnostics?"

"Here! Take it!" Mastermind could not remove the machine fast enough. He quickly tossed it to Forge. "Take that evil thing far, far away! Better yet, destroy it!"

"Hey, man. There's no need for that," Forge said popping open a maintenance panel. "Whoa, you guys had quite a time!"

"That is one way to put it," Piotr coughed. "So, how long have we been gone?"

"Well, you all disappeared from my lab about two or three minutes ago," Forge told him while studying the machine's logs. "But from your perspective you've been gone a bit over seven days."

"Seven days?" Mastermind gasped. "Feels more like it's been over seven years!"

"Seven long years," Remy drawled. "There have been award-winning research papers and movie scripts written in shorter amounts of time than that."

"That stupid trip was anything but rewarding," Sabertooth grunted.

"Aw, I wouldn't say that," Pyro waved. "Right, Pippi?"

"Py-roh, Py-roh!" Pippi chirped.

"Well however long it's been, you sure collected a ton of data in the machine's memory core," Forge commented.

"Memory core?" Piotr blinked in surprise.

"Yep. It's completely full," Forge extracted a compact information storage unit from the machine about the same size and shape as a computer's solid state drive. "Not just with maintenance and travel logs, but with hundreds of hours of video too."

"Video?" Remy did a take. "Video from what?"

"The swarm of intelligent, self-organizing, durable, hoverable, wireless nano-cameras integrated into the time machine of course," Forge said casually.

"Intelligent, self-organizing what?!" Mastermind yelped.

"Wait a second, I never saw any little camera-equipped drones flying around anywhere," Sabertooth growled.

"Well, duh. They're really small. Only a few cubic nanometers in size," Forge explained. "They're programmed to automatically deploy upon arriving in a new location, wirelessly receive energy and transmit sensor data to the memory core and are recalled back to the machine before traveling to a new time."

"Really?" Piotr was stunned. "That is incredible."

"You mean there's video footage of our trip?" Pyro's eyes widened. "Yay! Alright!"

"That's impossible," Magneto protested. "No drone could possibly function reliably at such a microscopic size, much less collect useful visual data. The poor lens resolution alone would make even a thousand such cameras working in tandem practically useless."

"Oh yeah? Then what do you say to this?" Forge plugged a cable into the machine's memory core and turned on a nearby monitor. "Ta-da!"

"Wow," Piotr blinked as the monitor depicted a familiar historical event. "I was not expecting the video quality to be so steady and defined. And the audio is amazingly clear too."

"AAAHHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOO!" Mastermind was seen wailing on the deck of the listing steam ocean liner Lusitania. "HELP! SAVE ME! I CAN'T SWIM! WAUGGGHHH!"

"GAHHH! QUIT CHOKING ME, BONZO!" Sabertooth was shown holding onto a near-vertical ship's railing with one hand while trying to pry a hysterical Mastermind off him with the other. "LEGGO OF MY NECK! AAAGGGHHH! NOT THE HAIR! YEEEOOOWWW!"

"Unfortunately, a little too clear," Mastermind groaned in embarrassment.

"Great, just what we need. More reminders of the stupid trip," Sabertooth grunted. "As if our memories weren't traumatizing enough."

"Ooo, this is priceless!" Pyro smiled watching the monitor. "Indisputable video records of our time travel escapades."

"Interesting," Magneto studied the monitor carefully. "I must admit these scenes are very convincing, but they could still have been faked."

"How would we have been able to fake videos like that?" Piotr pointed out. "Why would we want to?"

"Yeah, and if the videos weren't enough, we also 'acquired' a bunch of authentic historical souvenirs," Remy added. "And that's not including our new clothes or Pyro's dodo."

"Really?" Forge paused the video. "Sweet! What do you have?"

"Well, we actually stashed most of our stuff in secure souvenir caches around the world," Remy admitted. "We'll have to make plans to retrieve them all at some point."

"How convenient," Magneto scoffed skeptically.

"We only have a few odd pieces on us," Remy pulled out a handful of small items from his trench coat. "Let's see, there's a medieval Chinese magistrate's silver hairpin, a piece of the plane Amelia Earhart was flying when she went missing, a 50's CIA pin from what later became Area 51…"

"What?" Magneto blinked at the objects in surprise.

"A piece of cooled volcano lava from Java," Pyro added reaching into his pocket. "And the autograph of a really unique author sheila and some pages I ripped…er, I mean saved from her last, highly anticipated manuscript."

"I should have known," Mastermind moaned.

"A ship's rivet from the Lusitania, a piece of the large meteor we ended up inside of," Piotr held out his small collection. "And an unused wooden spoon from the so-called stew Mastermind prepared in Zimbabwe."

"That girl in Arabia gave me her headscarf," Sabertooth grunted fondly. "Said it was infused with myrrh. Gotta admit it smells pretty good."

"A nice lion-headed ring, some gambling winnings," Remy went on. "And a wallet I took off some random college guy back at Harvard. Though any ID or other personal information inside it got ruined by a wave from the water slide before I could read any of it."

"You call that sorry collection of bric-a-brac a set of historical souvenirs?" Magneto sneered disdainfully. "It's nothing but a bunch of junk! I've seen better pickings at flea markets and…wait a second. That wallet looks awfully familiar…"

"Don't forget the notebook of that historian bloke who nearly found out about us," Pyro reminded Remy. "And that big ol' diamond you swiped from that fancy bloke in India…mmmppphhh!" He yelped as Remy quickly covered his mouth.

"What was that?" Magneto glanced at them.

"Nothing," Remy whistled while tightly clamping a hand over Pyro's mouth. "Just a few more minor pieces not worth talking about…ow!" He yelped as Pippi came to Pyro's defense. "Yeow! Hey, watch the hands!"

"Do-doh! Py-roh!" Pippi flapped her wings.

"Thanks, Pippi!" Pyro chirped tickling her chin. "Who's a good little sheila? Yes, you are! Yes, you are!"

"Who's about to be sick?" Mastermind groaned. "Yes, I am! Yes, I am!"

"There is one 'souvenir' which fully supports our time travel story," Piotr smiled at Pippi. "Even you can not deny the existence of her."

"You have a point," Magneto slowly stared at his subordinates in shock and acceptance. "I don't believe it. You all really have traveled through time."

"Trust me, boss. Time travel ain't at all what it's cracked up to be," Sabertooth warned.

"No kidding," Mastermind moaned. "Time travel is nothing but a huge mess of trouble!"

"Tell me about it. Conceiving and building my time machine was relatively easy. Getting all the bugs out of it is the hard part," Forge said as he turned off the monitor and unplugged the machine's memory core. "I was worried you guys would never make it back. Glad you finally discovered how to use the recall button."

One could have heard a feather drop as the five former time-traveling Acolytes froze before slowly turning towards Forge. "Recall button?" Remy finally managed to get out after a minute. "There was a recall button?!"

"Of course. How do you think I managed to return to this time after running the initial tests of my time machine?" Forge indicated an unlabeled, inconspicuous button on the machine. "I added a recall button in an attempt to get around the problem of the machine always choosing random destination times and coordinates."

"Eh?" Sabertooth twitched.

"See, pressing the recall button switches between all the previous destination times and coordinates stored in the travel logs," Forge explained. "Including the time and coordinates of the machine's original departure."

"You mean…we could have returned to our own time…at any time…just by pressing the recall button?!" Mastermind shrieked.

"Theoretically, yeah," Forge nodded. "Granted, the recall button itself is pretty glitchy. But it will eventually work. You just have to press it repeatedly a dozen times in a row or so. Or a few hundred…"

"KILL HIM!" Mastermind, Sabertooth and Remy leapt at Forge with crazed, murderous looks in their eyes. "KILL THE INVENTOR! THE MIND THAT CAME UP WITH THAT ACCURSED TIME MACHINE MUST DIE! DIE I TELL YOU!"

"Stop!" Piotr quickly armored up and barely managed to prevent his three mad teammates from tearing Forge to pieces.

"Stand down you lunatics," Magneto ordered using his powers to haul his four brawling subordinates back. "You may not kill him. Yet."

"Yet. Yet is good," Forge gulped holding up his hands. "Look, sorry about not telling you about the recall button before, but you left before I could mention it. Besides, everyone obviously made it back in one piece, so it's all good."

"NO IT'S NOT!" Mastermind screamed. "I've been left mentally and physically scarred for life thanks to the arbitrary antics of your stupid time machine!"

"I'm gonna have nightmares for years after what that bloody thing put me though!" Sabertooth roared.

"Ninety-nine-point nine percent of our trip was either fine, tolerable or enjoyable," Remy glared daggers of death at Forge. "It's the point one percent I was forced to endure that makes me wanna blow you to bits!"

"Uh, there's no need for that," Forge gulped nervously. "Let's focus on the good ninety-nine-point nine percent parts. Like your luck of randomly hitting upon the correct destination times and coordinates which enabled your return."

"Aw, it wasn't luck, mate. It was Gambit's and my future granddaughter who finally fixed the machine," Pyro said proudly.

"NEVER SPEAK OF THAT SICK, TWISTED FUTURE AGAIN!" Remy howled. "NEVER, NEVER, NEVER!"

"Your what?" Magneto blanched at Pyro and Remy in horror. "You mean you two maniacs will end up having grandchildren in the future?"

"Well, technically it was only a possible future," Piotr coughed. "You see, Pyro was married to Rogue and Remy ended up marrying…"

"DON'T SAY IT!" Remy screamed. "FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE DON'T SAY IT!"

"Cajun's got a point," Sabertooth shuddered. "Just thinking about that last pairing gives me the creeps."

"O-kay," Magneto blinked. "Something tells me I don't want to know."

"You have no idea, Magneto," Piotr groaned.

"Don't you mean 'dad'?" Pyro asked innocently.

"DAD?!" Magneto yelped.

"You said you did not want to know," Piotr glared at Pyro. "And it will stay that way!"

"Fine, I'll save that brain damaging conversation for another time. There are more important matters to consider now that the time machine has been repaired and proven to work," Magneto said turning his attention back to Forge. "I can use it to go back and change the past according to my desires. Or travel to potential futures to gain new knowledge and technology. All my dreams of mutant supremacy will finally be achieved!"

"No! You don't know what you're dealing with!" Mastermind wailed. "That time machine is evil! Evil I tell you! It's too dangerous to exist! It must be destroyed!"

"Silence, fool!" Magneto snapped. "Traveling thought time has obviously damaged what passes for your mind. But a being of truly high intelligence and evolution such as I will easily be capable of harnessing its full power and potential!"

"You have a point about my time machine being too dangerous, man," Forge whispered to Mastermind while Magneto continued to go on about his grand plans to manipulate and travel through time. "But destroying it might be difficult. I made the machine too well. This baby is waterproof, shockproof, bulletproof, fireproof, radiationproof, laserproof, surgeproof, bombproof…"

"But it ain't Gambit-proof," Remy reached out and charged the machine in Forge's surprised hands. "Get rid of that thing. It's gonna blow!"

"Right!" Forge quickly tossed the glowing time machine aside.

"What?" Magneto realized too late what was going on. "NO!"

BOOOOOOM!

"There, that solves that problem," Remy said as the time machine harmlessly blew up in a corner.

"Thank goodness!" Mastermind sagged against a lab table in relief. "The nightmare time travel trip is finally over! Hooray!"

"If only you could say the same about the living nightmare that is your life," Sabertooth mocked.

"Gambit you idiot!" Magneto roared furiously. "Do you have any idea what you've done? My plans are ruined! You are going to pay for…wait," He trailed off and turned back to Forge. "Who needs that time machine when I have the inventor who built it in the first place? And who will build me another one…"

"Sorry, not this time," Forge quickly typed a coded command into a nearby keyboard. "I got other plans."

"Uh oh," Piotr gulped as every monitor in the lab flicked on and began showing an ominous, ticking countdown. "This does not look good."

"What did you do?" Remy stared at Forge.

"Triggered my lab's self-destruct sequence," Forge said casually. "It never hurts to be prepared."

"You what?" Mastermind yelped. "What kind of paranoid nutcase puts a self-destruct sequence in their lab? In their own house?"

"You haven't been to Xavier's yet," Pyro quipped.

"Bet you wished you'd been nicer to me, huh?" Forge grinned at Magneto defiantly. "Nobody threatens to abuse my family or inventions and gets away with it!"

"That's what you think," Magneto attempted to use his powers to halt the detonation. "What the? It's not working!"

"Fiber-optic data lines with plastic explosives and chemical detonators," Forge smirked as the uninterrupted countdown continued. "Gotta love backups!"

"No! This can't be happening!" Mastermind wailed covering his eyes. "I survived being nearly killed countless times during our insane time travel trip only to die five minutes after finally returning to our own time! Talk about irony!"

"More like tragedy," Sabertooth braced himself as the countdown approached zero. "Oh, this is gonna hurt…"

"Aaahhhhhh! Help! Mags! Save us! No!" Pyro yelped.

KA-BOOOOOOOOOM!

"Am I dead?" Mastermind whimpered.

"You are just fine," Piotr assured him. "We all are."

"Good job using your powers to create a scrap metal shield to protect us, boss," Sabertooth grunted. "It held. Barely."

"I was fortunate there was so much metal equipment in here," Magneto said lowering the makeshift metal shield. "Unfortunately, I couldn't save any of the equipment intact. I had to quickly transmute the shape and density of it all in order to create the shield."

"We're alive! The boss saved us! Yay!" Pyro whooped happily hugging Pippi.

"Do-doh! Py-roh!" Pippi cheered.

"Speaking of unfortunate ones saved," Magneto gave the pair a look.

"Oh dear," Piotr gulped looking around the wrecked, ruined lab. "I do not think that mutant inventor made it."

"Eh, big deal," Sabertooth grunted. "He made his choice."

"He probably made the walls, floor and ceiling explosion-proof too," Mastermind groaned. "At his family's insistence."

"He was standing right in the middle of it all. I doubt there's enough of him left to run a DNA trace on," Remy said studying the damage. "I must say, that homme sure knew his explosives. Used just enough to completely destroy all his inventions, records and equipment without damaging the rest of the house."

"How considerate," Piotr commented.

"Well, looks like we finally had a successful recruiting mission," Pyro smiled facing Magneto. "Presenting our newest Acolyte mascot: Pippi!"

"Py-roh! Py-roh!" Pippi cooed.

"Great, just what I need. Yet another dodo around to put up with," Magneto groaned. "I'll deal with you two featherheaded birdbrains later. Just leave me alone and be quiet until we return to the base."

"The base!" Mastermind's eyes filled with tears as the exhausted Acolytes headed up the basement stairs. "The beautiful, beautiful base! Never again will I leave it!"

"Be careful what you wish for, Masty. I thought you'd have learned that by now after our trip," Remy yawned. "Man, it's been a long day. I can't wait to lie down in my own bed and finally get a decent night's sleep."

"A bed!" Mastermind sniffed dreamily at the thought. "A real bed…some real sleep…"

"A clean, working modern toilet and bathroom would be nice too," Piotr said following Magneto out of the house. "Not to mention a long, hot shower."

"For once I could go for a shower too," Sabertooth grunted. "Right after I posh off every drop of my personal stash of beer, brandy and scotch."

"You're gonna love the base, Pippi," Pyro chirped petting his dodo. "Don't worry, I'll build you a nice nest, give you a good home, lots of love and supply you with an endless supply of yummy, roasted nuts!"

"As if there wasn't enough nuttiness already associated with this group," Remy quipped.

"Do-doh! Py-roh!" Pippi happily nuzzled Pyro's chest.

"I feel guilty about the way all this is ending," Piotr sighed as the Acolytes crossed the empty house's backyard. "I am glad to finally be back, but it cost that young inventor his life. He sacrificed himself and his inventions in order to protect his family. I respect him for that."

"Don't worry, homme. Something tells me that Forge guy made it outta there alright," Remy whispered. "Don't tell Mags, but I didn't see a trace of his alleged remains splattered anywhere in the lab."

"Really?" Piotr blinked in surprise. "Oh good. What a relief."

"And I saved the time machine's memory core with all its video footage," Remy grinned patting his pocket. "Nabbed it right before Mags locked us inside his makeshift metal shield."

"Oooo, that's great!" Pyro giggled quietly. "I can't wait to see what all the machine's swarm of little nano-cameras picked up!"

"Should make a few interesting movie nights that's for sure," Remy smirked. "And I'll be making a personal video collection of all the historical doppelgängers of my lovely, fair chérie…"

"I must confess I am somewhat sad that the time machine has been destroyed," Piotr admitted. "Despite all the trouble, chaos and madness we got involved in the machine did take us on the trip of a lifetime."

"Eh, our lives aren't over yet," Pyro smiled tickling Pippi's chin. "Who knows, maybe we'll find ourselves going on another time travel trip someday."

"No, not again," Mastermind whimpered hauntedly. "Never, never again…"

"It does seem inevitable that someone, somewhere will eventually build another machine," Piotr mused. "Hopefully by then humanity will have the wisdom and discipline to use time travel responsibly as a tool to study and better understand history."

"Yeah, right. Like that will ever happen," Sabertooth snorted.

"Do you really think that mutant inventor made it out of his exploding lab okay?" Piotr asked Remy. "It does seem very unlikely."

"You heard the man, mon amis. Inventors love backups," Remy grinned reassuringly. "Something tells me that Forge homme is just fine."

Meanwhile, somewhere…

"Alright, it worked!" Forge crowed studying a chest-mounted display screen attached to a body harness with a round, backpack-like device strapped to the back. "I knew my attempts to invent a rig that duplicated Nightcrawler's teleportation powers would finally work and pay off. Okay, I didn't know it would work per se, but I'd call this a pretty successfully test run! Really drained the rig's quantum capacitors and fuel levels though. Probably be a while before I can use it again."

"Hmmm, bet that unhip Magneto dude survived my lab's self-destruct sequence," Forge thought for a moment. "He'll be on the lookout for me now. That means I can't go home. At least not right away. Hate to have my family think I went missing again, but they've dealt with it before. They should be able to do it again. Whoa, good thing I slipped on a face mask and portable oxygen supply before my lab blew up. The atmospheric readings of wherever I ended up look like they're on acid. Well, they actually are acid in some cases. And they look kind of familiar…wait a minute. I incorporated my modified transdimensional projector into this teleporter rig. And that means…"

"ROOOAAARRR!"

"Huh?" Forge blinked and looked around to see he was standing on a bare, rocky outcrop surrounded by random fire plumes, glowing lava streams and a pack of red, dangerous-looking creatures with bulging heads, sharp claws and very, very big teeth. "Oh boy…"

Historical quotes:

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

"History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there." - George Santayana