Akai Kah'ghe: Thanks. You should see what I have planned for later chapters.
Laureate: What is FLCL?
Abigail Marie: Yah, that's one of my favorites too.
Jc: Thanks. I hope you like the next chapter too.
Disclaimer: LALALALLALALALLA! X-men will probably never be mine.
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I toyed with the idea of starting a singing round again, but Lance was driving and I didn't know how he'd react. Probably run the van into a ditch.
We had taken care of the other van, though because of the robot there had been little to take care of. John had a grand old time.
Our new van was nicer, cleaner, and devoid of any illegal substance. Gold star for us.
"What ah wahnt to know is why these things are so easy to beat." Rogue had taken shotgun this time. Doggy was sitting between Sam and Wanda, and I was sitting window seat next to John, who in turn was next to Ray, who had fallen back asleep.
John snorted softly. "Just be glad they are sheilah. With the way things are, we wouldn't have a whole lot of chance against any of the buggers."
I felt my eyelids growing heavy. I only had three hours of sleep in about two days.
"So what kind of family you got in L.A ?" Damn. Almost got to sleep. I looked over at Lance.
"Uncle."
"He a close uncle? What?"
"He's a black sheep, and my parents don't like him to hang out at my house."
There was a brief silence, then Wanda tapped me on the shoulder.
"We're going to see an uncle of yours you barely see?"
"Not really. I got phone calls from him all the time."
"Uh, he doesn't have like, a record only a mother could ignore, does he?" Lance signaled to change lanes.
"Of course not. He's never been arrested."
"Well, what do ya mean by black sheep?" Sam was curious.
"He'd decided that country life was no life for him and took off for L.A. He's also a little...special."
"Geez!" Wanda slumped back into her seat.
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"Jean! What is it?"
Jean looked over her shoulder to see Scott. He was full of hope, but as soon as he saw her face, he turned serious.
"What's wrong?"
"Just got a report from Angel." Logan and Ororo walked towards him.
"It appears that the droids that we were attacked by earlier are moving." Ororo watched Scott. "They may be going after other mutants."
"Why? What is there purpose?"
"Search and gather information." The group whirled around to see Magneto and Hank.
Hank stepped forward with a small device in his hand. "This device records information on mutants, and sends them back to where ever. It is not operational now." He handed the device to Logan.
"So these things are just an appetizer?" Logan turned the device over in his hand.
"Yes, but that's not the bad news."
"There's more?!"
"Yes. As McCoy explains it to me, a great number of these droids have disappeared. It can only mean one thing." Magneto watched their reactions.
"And what would that be? " Logan growled.
"They are after our missing comrades. And we have no way of tracking them or warning our comrades."
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L.A. is so big. And noisy. And crude. I never heard words like that before.
Lance stuck his head out the window and yelled at someone who was too close to his bumper. I sighed and leaned my head back. This traffic Jam would take awhile to get through.
"We're gonna have to ditch this thing anyway, why don't we ditch it now?" John was yelling.
"We cahn't leave it heah, we'll get arrested!" Rogue glared back at him. Yeah, we'll get arrested for leaving our car unattended. Never mind the fact that we stole it, committed a variety of felonies, was in the possession of an illegal substance, etc.
But I decided not to mention that.
I looked around at the street signs. My uncle black sheep had made me memorize the ways I could get to his work. He said that I was special and that he would wait for me to come visit him. If he only knew. He visited a couple of times before my parents forbade him to come back. They thought he was a bad influence on me. But he always dropped calls for me and all of my siblings, asking how we were doing.
But I guess my parents never gave him the institute's phone number, because he never called.
I sighted a street sign I remembered. "Lance! Pull off here, I know the way from here!"
Lance did so, glad to be out of the bustle. We clambered out, and Lance quickly wiped the steering wheel and side doors. No sense leaving finger prints.
I led the way with Doggy padding beside. Kally was with Ray and Herman had developed a liking to the inside of my shirt.
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"How much longer?" Ray panted. Me and Sam were sweating, but that was because of the humidity. The others were just out of shape.
"One more block." I squinted at the sign ahead of us. A bar.
The guys all whooped and broke thier paces more evenly. The girls kept up with us. Barely.
Lance was the first one at the door and swung it open and rushed with the other guys into the air conditioning. I was about to go inside too, when Ray backpedaled out.
"That is not a normal bar."
"I told you he was special." I shoved him back in. "Don't be disrespectful of my kin."
I think Wanda and Rogue may have hesitated, because they came in a full second behind me. To tell the truth, I was a bit embarrassed myself. Girls don't usually hang out in gay bars. All the guys in the bar stared at us.
Lance and the other three, had a sort of 'deer in the headlight look' that men who just stumbled into the last place on earth they want to be often have.
I chose to become blissfully unaware and walked up to the barkeep.
"Good morning sir, is the owner in?"
"Robbie? What do you need to see him for?" The barkeep was big, with black hair and blue eyes.
"Robert Nesmond is my uncle."
"And who are you?"
"Danielle Nesmond. Also known as Danny."
The barkeep actually broke into a grin. "Hell, I thought you might be her. He described you pretty good. I'll call him. How long you been in LA?"
"In twenty-two hours it will be exactly one day." I commented dryly.
He picked up a phone on the bar. "Jimmy? Somebody here to see you. No, I'd think you wanna see for yourself." He put the phone down smugly. He nodded to my companions.
"Road trip?"
"You could say that, sir."
"Don't call me sir. Call me Andy."
"You could say that, Andy."
"DANNY!"
I turned around to see a man with well groomed brown hair and my same gray eyes.
"Uncle Robbie!" Uncle Robbie gave me a big hug. He was a couple inches taller than I.
"What are you doing here Dan? And who are your friends?" He was looking at my group of friends behind me. I introduced them all to Uncle Robbie. He shook their hands, though I noticed Lance was a little reluctant.
"Why don't we all go into the back? You guys look hungry!"
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Lunch (or was it dinner? Breakfast? I hate time changes.) was a simple affair of microwave dinners. But none of us complained. I decided to tell Uncle Robbie about my new life.
"And now Doggy and I hang out at the institute."
"Strange. How did they find you? Transcripts? Good looks?"
"Very funny. I'm a mutant. And so are they." I guess that delivery was a little sudden, because he had been drinking a soda and choked on it. He cleared his throat.
"Well, I knew you were different, but not that way…How do you know?"
"I can talk to animals.
It's really interesting."
"Ah." He chewed on that for a
while. "Well I would have picked the
power to become totally irresistible, but whatever life gives you-"
"Uncle Robbie!" I laughed. This was one of the reasons I liked Uncle Robbie so much. He always looked at everything with rose colored glasses. It was all good.
"I have a power too."
I glanced up at him. "What?"
"I have the power to predict things. I predict that you've been in trouble. And unless I'm wrong, which you know Danny, a Nesmond is never wrong, you need a little help."
I hung my head. "Yeah. We need to get back across to the east coast, and we got these things chasing us. I'm sorry I brought you into it."
"Tosh. You know I would have jumped in sooner or later anyway. What kind of trouble is it?"
"Err. Well you wouldn't want to hear about it."
"Humor me." Uncle Robbie poured some more soda into my cup.
"Well, we hitched an illegal ride onto a plane, busted into an atm and stole money, paid for a night in a dinghy motel with said money, stole a van and drove it to the border only to realize it was full of illegal substances, took out a federal checkpoint, ran four cops off the road resisting arrest, ditched the van in the nearest town we got to, to be attacked by some robot after out poor mutant hides, committed arson of a whole different degree, stole another van, ditched it about three miles away, and came here."
"And that was only in two days," Ray remarked from his TV dinner.
"You forgot to mention you were the one that ran the cops off the road and destroyed the checkpoint." Lance reminded me.
"Sheilah's got driving skills that put me to shame." John said into his soda.
"Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet, sweethearts. Once a Nesmond gets into a bit of trouble, they go the whole haul." Uncle Robbie was laughing. "I'll tell you what. I'll give you guys a van and you can take it. I'll even call Spike to keep an eye out for you if you get into trouble."
"Spike?" Rogue wondered.
"My cousin. He's a gourmet chef." I informed her. In truth, I wanted to see Spike very much. "Thanks, Uncle Robbie."
"Don't worry about it. You don't think Spike hasn't done this before? He's pulled more crazy stunts in one day than my brother, your father, would pull in a life time."
Uncle Robbie showed us all to our rooms. He segregated boys from girls, because he said he knew those boys were straight. I asked him how he knew, and he told me it was a repressed mutant ability. Even though it was the middle of the day, me and the other two girls were dog tired. I lay down on a cot and let my arm dangle down where I could scratch Doggy's ears. Herman crawled out of my shirt and curled up on my stomach.
Where do we go now? Now.
(Hopefully we start home.)
Your uncle is strange. Uncle. But nice. But nice.
(Thanks. Yeah, he's a bit strange.)
But nice.
(Yes. He's my favorite uncle.)
"Hey Danny."
"Yes Wanda?" I shifted slightly so I could see them.
"Your family, is it filled with lunatics?"
"Not my immediate family, but a couple here and there, yes."
"Spike and Uncle Robbie?"
"Special cases."
"Why didn't yo' parents tell your Uncle that you wer' a mutant?" Rogue looked at me seriously. I moved a little uncomfortably, but stopped when Herman began to chatter at me in annoyance.
"Probably a couple of reasons. Didn't want my Uncle to come see me if I was a mutant. Didn't want my uncle to talk with me without them there to stop me from going astray."
"Astray?"
"My uncle is not the best role model. They don't want me hanging out with Spike either. They think he's a worse influence then Robbie."
"Is he?"
"Spike wouldn't ask me to do anything that would get me in trouble. Neither would my uncle. But they both have bad reputations with my parents, so it goes."
"If that's true, what do they think about you?" Wanda watched my face as I tried to explain.
"They love me to pieces. But I'm an anomally, something so out of the ordinary. They know I'm a good person, and that I would never drag my siblings into anything. But I'm also a mutant, and whether you guys know it or not, mutants don't exactly get great press. So I guess, in a way, by keeping me away from my uncle and cousin, they can stop me from being a bad mutant. Or something bizarre like that that only makes sense in Parent's minds."
"Weird."
"I can't help that."
"True. Let's get some sleep."
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Well, isn't this little story wracking up a crime spree?
I have to do research. More lawbreaking stuff.
Herman will NOT take reviews today. Doggy will take reviews. He is feeling nostalgic.
Doggy: Woof!
