The Dark Ride Saga – Chapter
Five
We and I be Meetin' The X-men.
Disclaimers-
"I resent that implication! My character is original! How many Italian plumber superheroes can you think of, huh?":
Cal's mine. Everyone else belongs to Marvel. You can tell they don't belong to me because if they did there'd be a swimsuit issue. Still a man can dream…
"Do you want it sir?" "Oh, do you sir? Do you want it?":
If you want to archive this, I will build a shrine to you and worship you as a god.
"Whatever floats your boat":
PG. As usual.
Zen and the art of temporal discontinuity:
Strange things happen. Reality in a conventional sense will be ignored.
"I'm too tired to think up anything amusing.":
There may be spoilers. Does anyone care?
Round about the same time I was meeting the X-men for the first time another conversation was taking place…
No wait…That aint right…It was…They were…While this was going on…
Gimme a second here.
I lived through this stuff.
Several times in fact.
It still confuses the hell out of me.
Doctor Hank McCoy. AKA Beast. Well known genius and all round smart guy.
I've tried explaining this stuff to him figuring if anyone could understand it he could. He couldn't. That may have been my fault. You can imagine how difficult that conversation could be, right?
Let me start again. The second conversation was happening at about the same point I was meeting the X-men for the first time, but it was happening several thousand years in the future.
Convergent timelines or something.
I'm making even less sense than usual.
Anyway.
It went something like this.
"It's ready? Finally? How does the finished product compare to the specifications?"
"Product? Try work of art. Try the single greatest masterpiece any human has ever borne witness to, let alone ever dreamed of creating. Death himself will weep for the souls of its victims. Despite the problems we had acquiring the necessary components it is complete, and to the required specifications. Nothing short of the reactivation of Armageddon armories will be able to stop it."
"And the Prototype?"
"The prototype will not be a problem. Contrary to popular belief he did not emerge invulnerable. There was a period of several years between his annihilation of the Culling Crew program and the point at which his DNA reflex was first recorded. That would be the perfect time to attack."
"The weaponry?"
"Everything is ready. The Oxygen Destroyer. The Torque cannon. The Crisis Engine. The Matter Caster. The unit's amour is even composed of ND matter. If it is damaged then it simply grafts fresh material from outside of existence. And it is ready."
I'm not sure what the room they were in at the time actually looked like but I just gotta take this opportunity to wax poetic.
(In other words these next few lines are a completely true story I just made up.)
The room stretched out into the darkness below the catwalk the two figures stood on. The darkness made it impossible to divine the true size of the room, but the emptiness of it, the hollowness sucked at the eyes of the viewer. This wasn't a place for people. This was an abyss. If you could ignore the way your eyes watered you might have glimpsed something. Darker patches moving in the blackness, and with them an ominous feeling that this time the abyss was ready to do more than just stare back. Much more.
Hehe.
How cool was that?
Anyway, back to my second favorite topic, Me.
Slowly I made my way to the top of the stairs, thinking desperately to myself as I did.
'Look pathetic! Don't make eye contact. Stutter. Call everyone sir. Flinch a lot.'
Marrow walked into the room and I heard her announce
"This is some mutant guy I met. He's gonna be staying here ok?"
I stepped into the room in time to catch the looks of amazement and confusion on the faces of half a dozen very surprised people sitting around a breakfast table.
They looked at me.
I looked at them.
They blinked in amazement.
I blinked because the morning sun was shining in my eyes and I'd just realized how early it was.
The clock on the wall read five fifty seven. Five fifty seven AM.
Yea.
That's what I thought, too.
Apparently there's been a five AM on Saturday mornings for a while now.
Makes you wonder what else they're not tellin' ya, huh?
I'd already forgotten everything about trying to appear meek and was trying not to scream something along the lines of 'what the hell is wrong with you people!?! Its five am! FIVE AM! AND YOU HAVE COFFEE! AND I DON'T! AND I WANT SOME OR CAL GO BUCK BIGGITY BUCKWILD!! EAHAHAHHAHHHHAHHAHAHAH!!!!'
At that point my eyes may have been rotating in different directions. I really am not a morning person.
Anyway.
A short guy dressed as a lumberjack was the first to comment.
"Him. Staying here. Uh-huh."
It was weird the way he said it. No inflection or anything. No surprise in the tone, or panic or anything. I mentally moved him from category A (Strangers) to category L (People not to borrow money from or put the Mac down on their family members, or indeed, annoy in any way, shape or form. Ever.) Three metal claws slid from the back of each of his hands.
Situation bad, getting worse.
A stunning African American woman with pure white hair who had managed to remain regal and composed despite the fact the angry lumberjack guy had done the claw thing was next to speak.
"Logan, perhaps we should allow Sarah and her… guest to explain themselves before we do something we may later have cause to regret."
"She brings home a B-movie monster and you want to let her explain? And not, Y'know, like kill it?"
This from an Asian teenage girl sitting at the table in front of a bowl of cereal so loaded with sugar it was giving me cavities just being in the same room. I decided right then she was a mutant, and her power had something to do with the ability to consume masses of stuff that is only food on a technicality.
The weirdest looking person at the table joined the conversation at that point. He looked like a giant Muppet. Kinda like Animals uncle or something. And he was blue.
"On behalf of those mutants with more shall we say, unconventional, physiologies may I take the opportunity to say Gee, thanks a lot."
He turned to me and continued
"Please, ignore our somewhat tactless companion here. Please, sit. Help yourself."
He waved an arm across the table. He was offering me coffee. I decided right then and there that if they did let me stay I'd attach myself to this guy. I'd never considered myself plucky young sidekick material but hell, he was the provider of caffeine.
I did mention it takes me a while to get anything resembling a normal thought process going if I'm up anytime before lunchtime right?
Anyway.
I sat at the table. I was finishing my third cup when I noticed that they were staring at me.
Well, ok. They'd been staring at me before, and hadn't actually stopped. Anyway. They were still staring at me, but it had gone from an 'Am I really seeing this?' surprised stare to a 'Yes I'm fairly certain its eating the crockery' stare.
Its not my fault I don't have lips.
Its also not my fault its easier to eat the cups full of wonderful caffeine laced coffee than anything else.
Its not like said cups were expensive or anything.
"Gambit tink yo friend maybe need a few pointers on breakfast table decorum huh petit?"
That was from a guy with red eyes. I remember I immediately thought
'Jersey boy. No doubt about it. That accent is fake. Seriously pathetic attempt to get chicks. Wonder if it works?
All I gotta do is refer to myself in the third person and add the occasional foreign word. Heh. Yea. It'd be like
"Hey, you Cal?"
And I'd be like
"We and I be Cal. You lookin' for him Oui non?"
Somehow, No. A thousand times no.
Anyway.
Marrow growled at him. So did I. He continued
"Gambit like dat you two get on so well. Like a house on fire Oui?"
I looked at him and smiled. Or at least my mouth curved up in the corners and all my teeth were showing.
"Ever been in a burning building Gatorbait?"
"Don call me Gatorbait. Gambit don tink you should be so disrespectful. Could be bad for a person, Unerstand?"
He'd left himself wide open with that one. I couldn't resist.
"Only the English bits."
The white haired woman who was trying not to smile interrupted our little verbal sparring contest.
Sarah, perhaps you would like to introduce everyone."
Marrow had helped herself to a large piece of very undercooked steak. So undercooked the cow probably had no idea it was missing. She looked up from her meal and with a sigh introduced everyone.
The Woman who hadn't said anything and had just sat and watched the proceeding with a mildly amused expression and who turned out to have a Mississippi accent thick enough to float bricks on was Rogue.
The very regal woman with white hair was Storm.
The hairy munchkin lumberjack claw guy was Wolverine.
The blue guy was Beast.
The one who'd called me a B-movie monster was Jubilee.
The guy with the red eyes who talked about himself in the third person was Gambit. I'd kinda guessed that was his name already.
Jubilee turned to me and said
"So like, tell us a little about yourself or something."
I fought down the urge to sigh. Up until then things had been going so well.