4.


"If this is a joke, then I don't get it at all," Jubilee muttered to herself. Ororo and her were walking down a hallway after an hour had passed and they were still at the same spot where they first began.

Ororo twisted the matter around in her head, looked it this way and that, manipulated it and stretched it to its limit, and yet she found nothing. Three persons disappeared in one day within the closest of periods. "It's most frustrating," she said almost to herself.

"And now everyone seemed pretty convinced that they went out to have some fun. Hank? Have fun? That sounds so un-Hank."

"You're ruining the basics of English grammar, Jubilee," Ororo remarked.

"Who cares? I'm not in the UK."


Scott was still unconvinced. He checked the trash bins, letters and parcels that came today, telephone bills for the last three months, transactions made under the name of Rex Havresciel (anagram of Charles Xavier's name for credit cards and financial businesses), and still there was no trace.

"No trace of what?" asked a voice behind him as he crouched beside Bobby's bed, searching for something. He came up, blushing but with true spirit of a leader he faced his wife's suspicious face.

"No trace of what?" Jean asked again, a hint of anger creeping inside her voice. Like any guilty husband Scott's façade crumbled. Rapidly. And tried in an instant to come up with a possible explanation as to his previous act.

"Of that darned mouse," Scott said slowly.

"Come again?"

"Of that mouse! Yes! That darned mouse came into the kitchen and ate half of the blue cheese I bought yesterday. I chased it to here and seems like I lost the trail."

"Which blue cheese? The one we bought from the store last night?" Jean suggested. Her expression changed to one of pure concern.

Women are so easy, Scott thought with a secret smile in the back of his mind, then caught himself doing so. What dangerous thing to do, he reprimanded himself. But Jean seemed to take no notice of it. "Yes! That one! I was going to have that for a snack."

"Oh damn!" Jean swore softly. "First those three boys, and now a chunk of cheese." She turned around angrily and left the room. "What would happen next? Flying pigs?"

Scott watched her disappear down the stairs and re-enter the room. He resumed his search. This time he began at the other side of the bed. As for one of the bed side was against the wall Scott pulled it away from the wall to reveal a rather tidy and clean area underneath the bed. It was packed with earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons and they all looked almost new. Scott jumped over the bed to get to the other side now revealed to him.

"AH!! God damned it!"

Even his curse was grammatically correct. Scott looked down to the sole of his right foot. It had begun to redden at an area close to the big toe. What caused it?

Then he saw something glinted amongst the immaculate-looking boxes.


"We cannot stay here. We have to move on."

Bobby looked sadly at Hank's frozen form. "But he'll die! We can't just leave him here!"

"Well, what can you do about it?" Ray angrily asked. "We're wasting time here, and that script has been waiting for us to activate it an hour ago. Which proved your words wrong: Petrify does not turn its victim to dust in an hour."

It was Bobby's turn to get angry. "You don't see it, do you?" He stood up and pointed at the dark spiralling shapes above them. "It could be anything! It could be the very thing which activates the spell itself! It could be another damned monster waiting to kill us! It could be ANYTHING!"

"Bobby!" Ray shouted at the top of his lungs. That effectively shut him up. "Cool it, okay? If you say so, then I won't. But still there is no point of waiting. We get nothing if we don't get moving." Bobby's eyes turned to Hank's frozen form. "You hear me? We can't stay here."

Without waiting further Ray walked toward the script and waved his hand before it, a sign he agreed to speak. The words sharpened immediately.

" 'There is one great priest here, in the Woods, who will aid us. Despair not, my friend; he will be in safe hands. I will see to it. Now, as I see it, we have two choices. Either me going to see the priest myself or it will be you who do that.' "

Bobby slowly stood up. Above him the same black shapes appeared. They no longer held wonder to him, only fear and loathing. Ray waited, crossing his finger behind him.

He waved his hand and the words sharpened. After some considerations he nodded and spoke: " 'Someone will have to look after him.' " Bobby stared at Ray right in the eye. " 'I will go.' "

The surprise in Ray's voice was sincere. " 'Are you sure?' "

" ' Yes. Now please tell me where he is before I change my mind.' " As if an afterthought he added: "Now that's the most natural script I've ever read."


Bobby made his journey into the deeper part of the Woods. Each of them had this map which showed the whole area, pretty much like the game board itself. The previous destination had been marked with a massive red 'X' and now his current destination was south of the red mark. A blue dot marked the spot exactly.

While he muttered to himself there was a loud cry; painful, in fact, and very human.

"Now who got sucked into the game?"

The cry got louder as he walked on. The sound of battle was unmistakable, and suddenly before Bobby the familiar black shapes hovered. Yes, he wanted to see what is happening. Yes, he wanted to help the old man who is being attacked by a bunch of orcs. No he doesn't need any reward. "Just let me help him!!" Bobby screamed at last. The invisible barrier disappeared.

After positioning himself strategically behind the oblivious orcs Bobby took out a quarterstaff +3 and silently approached them. When he got close enough he knocked off the head orc, then its weaker companions. Wasting no time he took out a short sword and cut off their heads.

"Bobby?" said a shaky voice.

The latter looked around. There, sitting on the ground, face whiter than sheets, in a priest's garment, was Scott. Sans the visor.

The pun was more than obvious for the clown inside Bobby. Instead of answering him he doubled over and laughed as loud as he could.


"I don't believe men anymore," Jean remarked as she sat down, a cup of steaming chamomile tea in her hand. Outside was cloudy with allusions to heavy rain. She had just told them how she caught Scott searching.

"Never always have," Ororo said, reaching out for a cookie Jim had baked. "No offence, Jim." Jim waved a never-mind to them. "I always regard them as a secondary element in my life, if not lower."

"You can't leave them for a moment."

Nods.

"If you do they'd ogle over someone or something else."

More nods. More cookies entered through luscious lips.

"I don't care about something else. What I do care is that someone else bit." This was Emma.

"What do you mean?" Rogue was lounging on the countertop exchanging playful winks with Jim who tolerated everything from her.

"Well, it's bad enough if your man's ogling over a woman. What if he was ogling over a man?"

Jean choked on her tea, spurting it all over the table while Jubilee's eyes widened conspiratorially. Rogue meanwhile had fallen off the countertop and was being helped up by Jim.

"God, Emma! Do you have to be that blunt!?" Rogue asked afterwards.

"Well, at least I'm being transparent!"

"You always are," Jean muttered.

"What?!"

"Of course you are! And I agree absolutely with you," Jean quickly glanced at Betsy who was silent from the beginning. "Don't you, Betsy dear?"

She did not reply. "Betsy?" Jean reached out to touch her hand and she shivered once. "Hey, what's the matter with you?"

Betsy looked around uncertainly. "I… uh, was thinking."

"Yeah? About what?"

"Warren."

"What about him?" Jubilee asked.

"He's been avoiding me since the last three weeks." When shocked glances were exchanged she went on. "There were phone calls on his cellphone from numbers I never heard of. Each time I answered it a male voice was at the other end asking for Warrie. When I asked who it was he would immediately hang up."

"Warrie?" Jubilee screwed her eyes and face, looking more Asian. "Isn't that the gayest thing I've ever heard."

Three hands slapped the back of her head simultaneously, resulting in her falling off the chair.

"I was about to dismiss it all," Betsy went on as Jubilee crawled up back to her chair massaging the back of her head and groaning, "when last night I heard himself talking."

"What did they talk about?" Jean asked. The others waited expectantly as Betsy swallowed audibly her tea.

What did they talk about? Stick around to know!