Title: Waving Bye, Bye, Bye to Sanity
Notes: In honor of N'Sync's upcoming new release - which, by the way, you'd be better off trading in for Systematic's debut. It's awesome. - I present to you my first and last story to ever have anything at all to do with N'Sync. I hope.
Continuance: ...None. No, really, I mean that. I just wanted to use certain characters, so there ya go.
Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel, N'Sync, Britney Spears, or anything else besides a really horrible digital camera. Oh, and Coke made me twenty-five bucks richer today thanks to their "Pop the Top" game, so that and the camera is all anyone will get if they bother suing me.
******
Throughout history, the kitchen has been regarded as the most involved room in the house, where families gather around a table and actually treat each other like family. It was the one room that seemed to always have the ability to bring others close.
Nowhere on Earth could that belief be both proved and disproved in the course of five minutes. Nowhere, that is, except Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning, where the true test of one's bravery was not by facing Magneto or Apocalypse, but rather by surviving breakfast.
And that, brave journeyer, is where our story begins.
What appeared to be every person ever associated with the X-family, but was instead the whole of the X-Men team, sat around the kitchen table. If one would listen closely, they would hear a wide array of accents ranging from southern to pure Cajun to British to the occasional New York or Boston dialects. The worst part of all was that everyone insisted on talking at once and carrying fifty different conversations at the same time. Rogue and Gambit sat talking about whatever it was they talked about alone, Betsy and Warren were making meaningless, cold chit-chat with one another, and Jean and Scott stood at the counter, Scott drinking coffee and going over a trip he and his wife would be taking to Jean's parents' home. Storm, Bishop, and Wolverine all ate in silence, but that quietness was more than made up for by the trio at the end of the table, namely Beast, Bobby, and Sam, who had chosen the mansion as a good spot to hide after an incident involving Cable, a power shortage, and a quart of sour milk. So far, no one had managed to get him to explain just what that incident was.
"Man attacked by squirrel, rescued by nearby school janitor wielding a weed eater." Bobby winced. "Harsh." Nonetheless, he still looked up to see a reaction. Sam shook his head.
"Too gruesome for breakfast. Find somethin' else."
Bobby appeared mildly disappointed but obliged anyway. It had become a morning ritual around the breakfast table in the mansion, during which Bobby would scan the paper for the most bizarre story headlines he could find. It served to provide a bit of comedic relief to a place that sorely needed it.
The rustling of the paper was heard again, then Bobby squealed. Loudly. Hank nearly dumped his coffee on himself. Sam leaned over and looked for the source of his friend's excitement, then scrunched his nose up in distaste.
"N'Sync's comin' to MSG. Yay."
"Really?" Jean brightened and quickly forgot about her conversation with Scott. "I love them!"
Scott stared incredulously at his wife. "Honey, aren't they a little young for you?"
Jean's mouth dropped open in surprise, but she wasn't given a chance to reply before Gambit added his two cents - which, when Gambit spoke, equated to about a dollar fifty-seven.
"Well, y'know what dey say, Scottie. Older women do make de best lovers." Rogue stomped on his foot. "Or so I been told."
Jean's eyebrows shot up even more as her arms folded over her chest. "Is that so?"
Scott, sensing things were about to take a turn for the worse, set his coffee mug in the sink and gave a nervous smile. "I just remembered . . . I need to go fix something in the car. I think the engine's missing or something like that."
He didn't give Jean the opportunity to stop him before he bolted from the kitchen and out the door. Jean turned narrow green eyes to her loudmouthed teammate, tapping her foot impatiently against the floor. Remy suddenly thought back to one of the many history lessons he had been taught while in the Thieves Guild, and he suddenly knew what most of Britain must have felt like after France bailed out in the beginning of WWII.
And looking around, Remy couldn't see that anyone was going to bail him out, so he cleared his throat and pushed his bowl of cereal away.
"I . . . uh . . . t'ink I'm gonna go help Scott wit de car."
"You do that." Jean watched him as he left, wishing looks really could kill; had that been the case, Remy would have been little more than a mass of smouldering bones on the ground. "Can you believe those two?" She asked through clenched teeth. Rogue shook her head in response.
Deciding it best to not even think of getting involved in the brewing war, Sam turned his attention to Bobby. "So what, do you like N'Sync?"
"Nope." Bobby pointed to the paper and developed a dreamy look. "But Britney Spears is touring with them."
"Ain't she a li'l young for you?"
"Hey, if she's gonna flaunt it, I'm gonna look," Bobby defended himself stubbornly, tapping his finger against the newspaper, right on Justin Timberlake's head. "I'd pay for a ticket just to go see her."
"Yoah a sick, sad little man, Bobby," Sam shook his head as he walked to the sink, ducking when Bobby threw a snowball at him.
Such was the experience of breakfast in the Xavier mansion.
******
"Hey! Heads up! Comin' through! Whoops . . . sorry, dude!"
Jubilation Lee, as Monet had once put it, was "the very reason why some parents should not reproduce." She was also Jubilee, the roller-blading terror that whizzed past others in a blur of red and yellow.
"Jubilee, I've told ye not to skate in the house," Sean admonished without even looking up from the magazine he was reading while he passed through the main room. Jubilee, just having entered the doorway, smiled sheepishly.
"Sorry, Irish. Hey, you seen Paige around?"
"Prob'ly in her room where she always is."
"Thanks!"
"Dunnae mention it," Sean replied absently, waving a hand in the air behind him before disappearing around a corner. Jubilee, trying to get her skates off and run before Angelo caught up to her and tried to kill her after she nearly ran over him, succeeded and bounded the stairs in a frightening amount of energy. It was only a matter of seconds before she was standing outside the room she shared with Paige, cringing at the country music blaring behind the door. She didn't bother knocking before she pushed her way inside, immediately startled by how much louder the music became.
"You are not playing LeAnn Rimes in my room, huh uh." She moved to the CD player and pushed stop, choking down the urge to hurl the CD out the window. Paige, who had been working on an English paper, looked up and removed her glasses.
"It's my room, too, y'know."
"And my room. I'm not listening to . . . that," she mocked a shudder as she pointed to the CD, easily sidestepping the pillow her roommate tossed at her head. "So I was outside 'blading and Angelo was scanning the radio for a good station, and this one said they're havin' a concert to see who gets tickets to go see N'Sync. Awesome, huh?"
"Very," Paige muttered, sliding her glasses back up her nose and going back to her report. Jubilee gave a very weary, exasperated sigh.
"Come on, Hayseed! It's at the garden, even! That's, like, the coolest place ever! Y'know, Scott and Jean took me there once for a Bruce Springsteen concert. Jean didn't wanna go so she took someone to share the torture." Jubilee rolled her eyes and flopped down on her bed, sending pillows and stuffed animals spilling into the floor. "You gotta be at least a little interested."
"Says who?"
"Me! And I know you like 'em, you just won't admit it." Paige looked up, annoyance creeping into her otherwise placid blue eyes. "I've seen that poster of Lance in your closet."
"You little rat! What're you doin' in my closet?" She asked, urgency making her control slip and letting her accent come in a bit thicker than normal.
Jubilee only grinned impishly and turned the radio on. As if on cue, the DJ started giving details on the contest, announcing that the tenth caller would win a family four-pack of tickets. The tone to begin the contest sounded. Jubilee and Paige stared at each other for several long seconds before they both jumped from their beds and made a mad dash to the phone, each scrambling to get there first. Paige, being the taller of the two and therefore having much longer legs, won the race and started dialing the number given, surprised when the line was clear and she received an answer. The bigger challenge than getting through was trying to listen to the man on the other line and keep Jubilee from getting to her.
"What's he saying, huh? Paige! Paige, what's he talkin' about?"
"Shh!" Paige scolded, lightly but forcefully pushing Jubilee away. The younger girl came right back again.
Jubilee pouted when Paige refused to speak to her, then clamped a hand over her mouth when she heard her roommate start giving out her address. Paige hung up the phone a minute later, then directed her attention to Jubilee.
"Well?"
A large grin split Paige's face. Jubilee squealed, grabbing onto Paige's shoulders and proceeding to jump around the room with her roommate. As she was walking down the hallway to her room, Monet looked curiously into the room to see the two girls screaming like the idiots she always suspected they were, rolled her eyes, and went on her way.
******