"I want to tie-dye myself!" St. John said as he ran up and grabbed Tootie's hand but then dropped it a second later, appalled that he would do such a thing.
"I don't think you can tie-dye yourself, Johnny!" Tootie laughed. "Oh my! Kids say the darndest things!"
"Well what can we tie-dye?" asked Pietro. "I didn't bring anything white."
"Well, the camp description said to supply your child with a white T-Shirt but the camp is ALWAYS PREPARED!!" Tootie announced as they entered the tie-dye building which was actually just the Art and Crafts building again.
"I don't want to tie-dye." Said Wanda. "I want to finish my box-stitch."
"Well, tie-dying doesn't take too long!" Tootie said. "So you can tie-dye and THEN do your gimp!"
Tootie then sat everyone down at a table where there were four miniature T-Shirts lying down on the table and elastic bands scattered around the table.
"Too bad 'dis won't fit Remy when he's big again…" Remy said sadly as he held up the little shirt.
"How do I make a spiral?" asked Pietro. "I want a spiral!"
As Tootie began instructing Pietro on the fine art of spiral tie-dye, the other three set to work wrapping their T-Shirts with elastic bands.
"There." Said Wanda as she put her T-Shirt down that was wrapped in a total of ONE elastic band. "I'm done. Now dip my shirt in pink!"
"I think it'll look better with more elastics." Said Tootie. "Otherwise, you'll have an all pink shirt with one little white line going down it."
"Remy want a bull's-eye." Said Remy as he seemed to know exactly how to wrap his T-Shirt.
"I need more elastics!" St. John said to the world as he held up his T-Shirt that was wrapped in so many elastic bands that the shirt was hardly visible.
"I think that's enough elastics for you…" Tootie began.
"HEY!!" yelled Pietro. "You have to finish making mine into a spiral!"
"I did!" Tootie said.
"Where is it?!" Pietro demanded.
"Right there!" Tootie said, pointing to the shirt that was lying on the floor. Pietro ran over at the speed of sound and then back over with the shirt, holding it out for Tootie to grab.
"Mine first!" he commanded.
"Very well." Said Tootie since Pietro was her favorite. "What colors do you want your shirt to be?"
"Um…green!!" Pietro said randomly.
"I know!" said Tootie. "How about you make yours blue and I could do Wanda's up so it looks just like yours!"
"YEAH!!!" said Pietro, sounding so much more excited than he should be.
"No!" said Wanda, crossing her arms. "I REFUSE to wear the same thing as Pietro. Again. Other than what we're wearing right now."
"But it will be so CUTE!" said Tootie.
"I don't WANT to be cute." Wanda said.
"Can I make mine red?" St. John said, climbing up on a chair so he could see into the tubs of colors that were on the table.
"Please don't climb up here and hang over the tubs." Said Tootie. "I don't want you to fall in."
"I want me to fall in!" said St. John.
"You'd be stained red for days!" Said Tootie.
"COOL!!" St. John exclaimed but before he could do anything further, Tootie lifted him up and put him on the ground.
"Now go and finish tying up your shirt." She explained.
"I did." Said St. John as he held up a mass of rubber bands.
"That might be a bit much." Said Tootie.
"No." said St. John. "It'll be cool! Kinda like an explosion!"
Tootie decided to ignore St. John and turned back to Pietro.
"So what'll it be?"
"BLUE!!" Pietro cheered excitedly.
"All right!" Tootie said.
Meanwhile in candle-making…
"Can I dip my hand in?" asked Lance looking at the big bucket of boiling hot melted wax.
"It'll hurt a lot." Said Fruitie. "I'd prefer if you didn't."
"But I really want to…" Lance said sadly.
"So, I would assume that all we do in candle-making is make candles…" Kurt said as he held a piece of string and stood in line until it was his turn.
"That's right!" sang Fruitie.
"What fun is that?" Kurt asked.
"LOADS of fun!" Fruitie answered. "Do you not make candles in Germany?"
"Um…well, I didn't but I'm sure there were people who did." Kurt answered as Scott dipped his piece of string into the wax and then into the water and then into the wax and then into the water and so on…
"Hey!" said Kitty who was standing behind Scott. "Scott dipped his string into the wax four times! You said we only got to do it three times!"
"Well I'm the oldest." Scott said.
"That's not fair." Said Kitty, crossing her arms.
"Well, from now on I'll make sure to monitor how many time each person dips their string into the wax." Fruitie assured her.
"Tattletale." Said Scott as he went to the back of the line. Kitty went up and dipped her wick into the wax for her four turns. She took four just because Scott took four and she couldn't have Scott taking an extra turn and not her because that just wasn't fair.
Then it was Kurt's turn. He went up, dipped his wick the proclaimed number of times and then went to the end of the line.
"That was strangely enjoyable." He said to himself as he looked at his extremely thin and lame candle.
"And you can shape it into whatever you want while it's still warm and soft!" Fruitie explained as he twisted his candle around into the shape of a star and began dipping it.
"You can make a STAR candle?!" Lance marveled as he handed his candle to Fruitie. "Fruitie, make mine a star!"
"All right!" said Fruitie as he made Lance's candle star-shaped.
"I'm not making a star candle." Said Kitty since she wanted to be a rebel since she was the only girl in the group.
"Hey!" said Kurt as he looked out the window. "Can we dip leaves in the wax? It would be a leaf candle!!"
"Um…no…" started Fruitie.
"Why not?" whined Kurt. "We ALWAYS dip leaves in wax in Germany! You'd be breaking our oldest custom!!"
"Well, I wouldn't want to do a thing like that!" said Fruitie nervously. "You may go and get a leaf."
"Can I too?" asked Lance as he dipped his string in for a fourth…fifth… SIXTH time!! He wasn't going to go to the end of the line until someone caught him so he candle continued to grow.
"HEY!!" Scott said, pushing Lance out of the way. "He's cheating!"
"You did the same thing!" said Kitty, putting her hands on her hips.
"But I counted and he dipped SEVEN times!" Scott announced.
"Shows how much you know, Summers." Said Lance. "I dipped SIX times!"
"That's still more than you're allowed!" said Scott. "TWICE as much as a matter of fact. I think you should skip your next turn."
"No way!" yelled Lance.
"Yes way." Said Scott as he crossed his arms.
"Scott, Lance…" said Fruitie. "No fighting. Lance, go to the end of the line. Scott, stop yelling at Lance."
As soon as Scott rejoined Lance at the end of the line, he looked at him threateningly.
"Remember…" he said. "I still have my powers in this little body so I can still blast you from here to the moon."
"Aren't you special?" asked Lance. "I have mine too."
Suddenly, Kurt returned with a lilly pad.
"This is the leaf I want to dip!" he said.
"I don't think that will fit into the wax can." Said Fruitie.
"I'll make it fit." Said Kurt.
Meanwhile back in the Shack o' Tie-Dying…
"Look at this!" Tootie exclaimed as she finished taking all the rubber bands of St. John's shirt. That was a long and grueling task. It was pretty much a white shirt with very few random red splurges on it.
"WOW!!" St. John gasped, throwing his hands over his mouth. He reached out his hands to grab it but Tootie held it out of his reach.
"It's not dry yet." Tootie explained. "I'm going to hang it up until it's dry."
"But I want it NOW…" St. John complained.
"I'll just put it next to Pietro and Wanda's." Tootie said, going outside and hanging it on the handrail next to two nearly identical spiral shirts only one was pink and one was blue.
"I didn't want a spiral." Wanda complained.
"If you didn't have a spiral, then you wouldn't be like Pietro!" Tootie laughed.
"I know." Said Wanda. "That was one of the main reasons I didn't want one!"
"I can't wait to wear mine!" Pietro cheered as he ran around in circles really fast in a mad excitement. Remy stuck out a long stick that he found on the ground out and tripped Pietro. "What'd you do that for?!"
Remy pulled Pietro in really close. "Remy don't wanna see you usin' your powers anymore. Okay?"
"Why not?" Pietro whined. "I'm so fast!"
"Obviously." Said Remy. "It's annoying and you're gonna get caught."
"I want to wear my shirt now!" said St. John as he went and plucked his shirt off the handrail as Tootie was busy dipping Remy's shirt in colored dye. St. John's shirt was more or less completely dry because of the lack of dye on it. "Needs more red."
Then, St. John wandered over to the vat of red dye. Tootie was busy at the GREEN dye at the moment so she didn't see that happening. (She also didn't see Pietro running around in circles again even after Remy told him to stop. She also didn't see Wanda zap him to make him stop or Remy blow up an innocent acorn just for fun. Nope. She didn't see ANY of it.)
"Let's see." Said St. John, climbing up on the table and peering into a vat that had red liquid in it. (The vat with green liquid was, obviously, at a different table and that's where Tootie was.)
"What are you doing?" Remy asked since he has a tendency of making sure that everything was okay. Well of course! He's the big kid after all!!
"I'm just going to put more red on my shirt." Said St. John as he dropped his shirt into the vat so that some splashed up on his clothes and face. He wiped his face with his clothes and then reached down to get the shirt out of the vat, his arms going into the dye all the way up to his elbows. Then he pulled the shirt out of the vat and held it in front of him. It was dripping madly and splashing up onto him and all his clothes and everything but he only just kind of stood there until Tootie turned around just then to go to the BLUE dye since that was on the table that had the red dye on it.
Tootie gasped and dropped Remy's shirt.
"What have you done?!" she screeched.
"My shirt needed more red." St. John said innocently.
"Not only did I specifically tell you not to but for one, there were no elastics on your shirt so it's just a red shirt now and for two, you weren't wearing gloves!" Tootie explained in a flustered voice. "That dye will never come out!"
"Never?" St. John asked as he looked at his arms.
"Well, it'll come off your arms and your face after a couple of days but it'll never come off of your clothes."
"Remy told him not to." Said Remy. "But would he listen? No."
"Thank you Remy." Said Tootie with a sigh as she signaled to St. John to leave the building and go to the bathroom. "Try not to drip everywhere on the way."
"Should Remy go too?"
"Perhaps you should." Said Tootie. "I'll finish unwrapping your shirt for you."
"No." said Remy. "Wait until Remy comes back. Remy wants to see it."
"Oh all right." Said Tootie. So Remy ran after St. John to the little boy's room to help him clean the red dye off of his entire body.
He found St. John standing next to the sink in attempt to scrub the horrible red dye off of himself.
The two stood there in silence for a moment so the only sound was running water.
"Why…" started Remy.
"I DON'T KNOW!!!" St. John yelled as if he was anticipating the question the entire time he was standing there. "Something compelled me! I wanted more red and usually I would have intelligently dipped it in without getting any dye on myself but not this time! I went and figured it would be more fun and effective if I practically jumped in myself!"
"Wait…did you say 'intelligently'?" Remy said.
"Yes." Said St. John with a frown.
"Well, now you're red." Remy pointed out.
St. John looked down at himself and then back at Remy with a dopey smile. "I know, isn't it cool?" he said deviously. But then he slapped himself across the face. "NO! IT'S BAD!! What am I saying?!"
"Remy had no idea dat schizophrenia was among one of your many mental illnesses." Remy said.
"It's NOT!" St. John said angrily. "You have to admit that you've been feeling weird lately and done things that you couldn't explain later!" Remy scratched his chin and pondered. "Haven't you noticed Pietro acting AWFULLY strange?"
"Yeah…" Remy said. "REALLY strange…"
"Why am I the one putting all this together?!" St. John ranted as he pushed the button to the soap dispenser numerous times so there was a huge soap pile on the side of the sink. He stared at it and became momentarily humored but then he realized that if this was going to continue to humor him, the pile would have to be much bigger. So he continued to press the button time after time.
"You were saying…?" Remy led.
"Oh right!" said St. John. "Look! I just did it again!"
"You done dat before?" Remy said, looking at the soap that was now dripping on the floor.
"Not THAT!!" St. John said. "Are you PURPOSELY acting stupid just to annoy me or what?!"
"You don't really have any ground to stand on." Remy said.
"What?!" demanded St. John. "What about Pietro?! Is he or is he not just extremely… what's the word…"
"Literate?" suggested Remy.
"Yes." Said St. John. Then he paused and thought about it. "NO!!!"
