***************************************************************
AN HOUR LATER
After the cat was caught and restricted in a cage "for Cornutino's own good" as Logan ensured his very concerned 'mom', Gina escorted both her mother and the insane cat to their room, in order to get some sleep after that tiring trip they had. She probably forgot that her mother had already spent the entire trip sleeping.
Logan started to walk around the place, trying to make himself familiar with the fact that a cat was his brother-in-law.
Wandering in the halls of the huge old building that he called 'home' for many years, Logan found himself right out of the door to the lab, where Hank spent most of his days working his ass off. He decided to walk in and say 'hi' and also find out if his working hours allowed him to know that he wasn't supposed to get out, in case Elisa saw him, connecting his luscious blue fur with the fact that he's a 'nasty, nasty mutant' and set Cornutino to get him.
"Blue, are you in here?" he said as he knocked on the door that he had already opened.
"I'm currently present and available, my friend Logan. Would you like to rejoice us with your valuable company?" the friendly voice came, soothing his ears from an hour of hyper speeded grumbling. It seemed that Mediterranean women had a great talent on fast speaking, all the more deadly when combined with grumbling, like Elisa did the whole hour before finally finding her cat on a cherry tree in the garden. Logan's extra-sensitive hearing didn't help at all with the situation too.
"Who else is here?" Logan asked, before realising that Warren, Gambit and Bobby were in there too.
"My friends Robert and Remy were granting me their company for the last hour, probably wanting to avoid contact with your dear mother, and Warren just walked in here to stretch his wings a bit."
"They had gone numb by keeping them restricted under the jacket, for Elisa *not* to see." Warren added.
"I suppose you know about the whole anti-mutant thing then, huh?"
"Indeed. I have been making more image inducers, like the ones we have, so that we'll be able to give one to each student. This way nobody will have to hide in his room from your mother and the classes will be able to continue without further problems."
"I hope you will appreciate the sacrifices we make for your wife and her mother, Logan." it was Warren who re-initiated the painful circle of grumbling.
"Oh, shut up, Bird, Remy t'inks she's nice."
All three men cocked their heads towards the thief. "NICE?" they yelled at him in unison.
"Oui. Cute, even." Remy added shamelessly.
This time all three of them ignored him, probably thinking that he was just joking. Gambit would consider cute anything of female gender with legs. Even those with short, flabby legs.
***************************************************************
THE NEXT NIGHT
Logan was having a relaxing shower. He had washed out the sods hours ago and he now just left the hot water fall on his shoulders and help him relax.
Relaxation was all he needed right now. After spending a whole day around his mother-in-law, he needed to stop thinking about the days that were about to come and concentrate on the hot water massaging his backside.
Elisa, though being only one person, had made her distinctive impression all over the mansion, commenting on the needlessly expensive decoration, scolding Storm for her indecent taste on hair dye and lecturing Scott for wandering the mansion in his boxers. Not only she lectured Scott, but her lecturing also lasted longer and was too painful to actually just pretend to listen to while thinking about other things. It was painfully long, although it was actually in the form of one single sentence, since she never seemed to stop between saying two different things... that's how her lecture towards Scott had begun:
"As a teacher you should be giving the example to your students-not carry your body around in this state of clothing-and what IS the matter with those stinking red-RED!-glasses?-you wear those frigging glasses all the frigging time-do you even clean them?-are you aware that only drag queens and rock stars wear such sunglasses-and you young man-you seem to be nothing of these two-unless you run off at nights and sell your body at the closest whorehouse-not to mention the resemblances of THIS particular place to a whorehouse-why would pretty girls such as those in here ever need to dress up like prostitutes-and what kind of teachers are you at all?-what kind of example you're giving to the girls studying here-not to mention the young lady Aurora with her white-dyed hair!-you should wait until your sixties if you want white hair darling-you too my dear-yes-you with the white streak on your head-did you just scoop up the dye that was left from Aurora's and smeared it on your front hair?-oh you young people today-or is it just Americans?-I never saw such a bad example for the children back at my village..."
And that's when she took her first breath since beginning the lecture.
The hot, almost burning water had made Logan forget the rest of the things that she had said, but he would still need some minutes in there to erase the rest of it from his overloaded mind...
His mind drifted back to the storm that ravaged the land the whole day was also one of the facts that brought this day into one of the worst of his life. Storm, having a massive hangover from last night's drinking-karaoke contest, was pissed off at Remy and Bobby for tricking her into getting drunk and also felt like crap from the hangover. Elisa's evil lectures were NOT helping her to get her spirits up too. So it was no wonder that the greatest storm of the year had taken place today.
Trying to stop thinking about what happened that day, but about WHAT was going to happen, Logan tried to locate his lovely wife's equally lovely odour. Gina was right outside, slacking off on their common bed. Even through the repeating noise of the shower and the water splashing all over, Logan could hear the slight buzzing of the TV in the other room.
His enhanced ability to perceive sound also made his perfectly capable of hearing the knocking on the door of their bedroom.
He could hear Gina's footsteps towards the door and the brief greeting she shared with whoever it was as she opened it.
He could also listen to the visitor's voice and make out who it was.
A rich voice with fat, Mediterranean accent, brief and secured words.
'Mom'.
"Where's your spouse?"
"You can call him 'Logan', mom..."
"Never mind", she responded, the sound of the shower drawing her attention. "Is he coming out anytime?"
"He's in there for above an hour, so I must suppose he'll be soon out..."
Uh-Oh. Hearing this, Logan decided to stay in there as long as it took for the grumpy hag to get her ass out of there. His healing factor made him almost immortal, so he could easily win over her if he had to stay there until one of them died.
"He's there for an hour? Are you sure he's okay? Go check him out...what if he drowned and the water's still spending for no reason?"
Logan's claws spontaneously snickted out. Maybe if she kept on like this she wouldn't have to wait and die from natural reasons.
"Mom, why are you here? Weren't you supposed to be sleeping?"
"Oh, darling, I'm going insomniac again. Must be old Cornutino. Did you know how loud can a cat's snoring become? Especially a cat at his age..."
"And why would you come here, of all places?" Gina's voice seemed stern.
"Well, where else would I go, if not my only daughter's room? Just wanted to make sure you're all right."
"I'm with Logan, mom, with him I'm always all right."
"Oh, don't let me get started on him, Gina...Of all men, why should you get him?-There are so many decent Sicilian boys back home... Real, trustworthy men-unlike this low-life."
"Mom..." Gina's protest was supposed to interrupt her mother's growing rumbling, but it only got lost in Elisa's trail of words.
"...You know Flavio, the handsome son of Mr.Ganucci?-his older brother was seduced by a Russian wench and they took off-their father disowned him and now Flavio is the only heir to 90 acres of olive trees-he's still available and there's no woman on sight yet-"
"Maybe 'cause he's gay" Logan thought impishly.
"-so as soon as we get home I can give them a call-come on, Gina, nothing is lost yet with that animal-you can divorce him and since he hasn't knocked you up yet it will be as it never happened-and Flavio is so kind to the ladies-"
Logan chuckled freely under the disguise of the water's splashing. There was NO WAY his wife would leave THIS body for a bunch of olive trees at Sicily. Okay, maybe being naked in the bathroom always made him overconfident, but come ON. Things have changed since the 50's. The old hag should have known that. Especially an intellectual woman like Gina was close to the feminist one; the type of woman that would never accept to be sold for a big piece of land.
"-And you seem to need to get away from this place-this bald man on the chair is eerie-he can't even move his own wheelchair, for god's sake!-"
That was because Xavier had locked in a closet his high-tech hovering wheelchair in favour of a normal, plain one, that wouldn't provoke suspicions from Elisa. He wasn't used to moving the chair with his own hands.
"-and the cooking-don't let me get started with the cooking-almost none of the girls can cook a decent household dinner-so I promised to Jean and Rogue to show them how to cook a nice homemade Sicilian Pizza!"
Did she actually use an exclamation spot at the end of her sentence? I guess the rumbling grumbling had come to a halt for tonight.
"And that's what I had come to tell you tonight. I need someone to give me a ride to the city tomorrow..."
...and never bring her back.
"...so that I can buy the ingredients for the pizza and some things I will need for my residence here."
Wait a minute-she said *residence*? How long does she intend to live here? Long enough if she wants to buy things for herself...
"What do you want to buy, mom?" the ever-logical voice of Gina's was heard, feeling like a palm tree in the middle of a desert of grumbling.
"Oh, you know...I don't like the curtains in my room... And I guess I'll stay long enough to not have to suffer seeing them every time I wake up..."
OK that seemed pretty permanent to Logan, from his point of view. Slipping on the bathtub floor was inevitable by the time these bad news reached his ears. His head bumped on the side of the bathtub and nobody heard the thump coming from the bathroom. Not even Elisa with her unnaturally good (for her age) hearing.
He remained fainted like that for several minutes, until his healing factor kicked in. When he came to his senses, his mother-in-law had gone.
"I guess that hurting myself satisfied enough the hag to make her leave. Hey, maybe I should have done this from the beginning." he thought at himself, grinning and cupping his good-as-new forehead.
As he exited the bathroom, trying to look sexy in the towel around his waist, he saw Gina looking at him with a sweet look-like she wanted to ask him for something.
"Logan, I know that you haven't gone on a ride with your motorbike for weeks..."
He didn't like the sound of that...
"...so what would you say about doing it tomorrow, and give my mother a ride to the town as well?"
Ow crap!
***************************************************************
A FEW HOURS LATER
Hank was leaving his lab for the first time in a few days, having a mutant-sensitive guest and all.
He had just finished making all those highly needed image inducers and he felt really good for himself, since the cranky Italian lady would remain as a guest for a long period of time and the inducers he made would prove really important for the stability of the oncoming semester's classes.
He felt like he was worthy of a small celebration. Some soda with a bunch of Twinkies from the kitchen would be nice. His Twinkie stash in the lab had been long gone (with him being near it all those days, it was at least expected), so he would also have to renew it by bringing new ones from the kitchen's secret side closet.
Silently walking on the tips of his toes, in a desperate attempt not to wake anybody with his clumsy footsteps, Hank approached the kitchen.
He casually entered it without being alarmed from the fact that the kitchen's lights were turned on.
As he walked in, he noticed a little throbbing hunching black figure beside the kitchen table. Strange murmuring sounds were coming from the figure's direction.
Leaning closer, Hank realised that the figure was Logan's mother-in-law, who was praying in the middle of the night, in the kitchen, being on the floor on her knees and also bending down as much as she could. Her long grey hair was caught on a big ponytail, left loose to swing around in each movement.
As the old woman slowly stood up, unaware of the new presence in the room, Hank psychically prepared himself to greet her.
But then he remembered something.
His image inducer had been left behind in the lab.
He ran for the door and the safety of the darkness beyond it, just as she cocked her head towards him, barely enough to catch a brief glimpse of him and scream in terror...or excitement:
"DEMON!! DEMON!!"
She ran after whatever she saw, hunting it with her big crucifix, as it seemed to be obviously a work of the devil.
As she made it into the dark big hall and saw nothing, she realised that the creature was gone, frightened from her grace and morality, and had retracted itself into the darkness.
As soon as she was back at the kitchen and continued her prayers, the evil demon known as Dr.Henry McCoy retracted himself from the darkness of the small space behind the TV, forgetting any thoughts of Twinkies and soda for tonight and swearing to send Kurt to retrieve the Twinkies next time... this way the old hag might get herself a real demon.
AN HOUR LATER
After the cat was caught and restricted in a cage "for Cornutino's own good" as Logan ensured his very concerned 'mom', Gina escorted both her mother and the insane cat to their room, in order to get some sleep after that tiring trip they had. She probably forgot that her mother had already spent the entire trip sleeping.
Logan started to walk around the place, trying to make himself familiar with the fact that a cat was his brother-in-law.
Wandering in the halls of the huge old building that he called 'home' for many years, Logan found himself right out of the door to the lab, where Hank spent most of his days working his ass off. He decided to walk in and say 'hi' and also find out if his working hours allowed him to know that he wasn't supposed to get out, in case Elisa saw him, connecting his luscious blue fur with the fact that he's a 'nasty, nasty mutant' and set Cornutino to get him.
"Blue, are you in here?" he said as he knocked on the door that he had already opened.
"I'm currently present and available, my friend Logan. Would you like to rejoice us with your valuable company?" the friendly voice came, soothing his ears from an hour of hyper speeded grumbling. It seemed that Mediterranean women had a great talent on fast speaking, all the more deadly when combined with grumbling, like Elisa did the whole hour before finally finding her cat on a cherry tree in the garden. Logan's extra-sensitive hearing didn't help at all with the situation too.
"Who else is here?" Logan asked, before realising that Warren, Gambit and Bobby were in there too.
"My friends Robert and Remy were granting me their company for the last hour, probably wanting to avoid contact with your dear mother, and Warren just walked in here to stretch his wings a bit."
"They had gone numb by keeping them restricted under the jacket, for Elisa *not* to see." Warren added.
"I suppose you know about the whole anti-mutant thing then, huh?"
"Indeed. I have been making more image inducers, like the ones we have, so that we'll be able to give one to each student. This way nobody will have to hide in his room from your mother and the classes will be able to continue without further problems."
"I hope you will appreciate the sacrifices we make for your wife and her mother, Logan." it was Warren who re-initiated the painful circle of grumbling.
"Oh, shut up, Bird, Remy t'inks she's nice."
All three men cocked their heads towards the thief. "NICE?" they yelled at him in unison.
"Oui. Cute, even." Remy added shamelessly.
This time all three of them ignored him, probably thinking that he was just joking. Gambit would consider cute anything of female gender with legs. Even those with short, flabby legs.
***************************************************************
THE NEXT NIGHT
Logan was having a relaxing shower. He had washed out the sods hours ago and he now just left the hot water fall on his shoulders and help him relax.
Relaxation was all he needed right now. After spending a whole day around his mother-in-law, he needed to stop thinking about the days that were about to come and concentrate on the hot water massaging his backside.
Elisa, though being only one person, had made her distinctive impression all over the mansion, commenting on the needlessly expensive decoration, scolding Storm for her indecent taste on hair dye and lecturing Scott for wandering the mansion in his boxers. Not only she lectured Scott, but her lecturing also lasted longer and was too painful to actually just pretend to listen to while thinking about other things. It was painfully long, although it was actually in the form of one single sentence, since she never seemed to stop between saying two different things... that's how her lecture towards Scott had begun:
"As a teacher you should be giving the example to your students-not carry your body around in this state of clothing-and what IS the matter with those stinking red-RED!-glasses?-you wear those frigging glasses all the frigging time-do you even clean them?-are you aware that only drag queens and rock stars wear such sunglasses-and you young man-you seem to be nothing of these two-unless you run off at nights and sell your body at the closest whorehouse-not to mention the resemblances of THIS particular place to a whorehouse-why would pretty girls such as those in here ever need to dress up like prostitutes-and what kind of teachers are you at all?-what kind of example you're giving to the girls studying here-not to mention the young lady Aurora with her white-dyed hair!-you should wait until your sixties if you want white hair darling-you too my dear-yes-you with the white streak on your head-did you just scoop up the dye that was left from Aurora's and smeared it on your front hair?-oh you young people today-or is it just Americans?-I never saw such a bad example for the children back at my village..."
And that's when she took her first breath since beginning the lecture.
The hot, almost burning water had made Logan forget the rest of the things that she had said, but he would still need some minutes in there to erase the rest of it from his overloaded mind...
His mind drifted back to the storm that ravaged the land the whole day was also one of the facts that brought this day into one of the worst of his life. Storm, having a massive hangover from last night's drinking-karaoke contest, was pissed off at Remy and Bobby for tricking her into getting drunk and also felt like crap from the hangover. Elisa's evil lectures were NOT helping her to get her spirits up too. So it was no wonder that the greatest storm of the year had taken place today.
Trying to stop thinking about what happened that day, but about WHAT was going to happen, Logan tried to locate his lovely wife's equally lovely odour. Gina was right outside, slacking off on their common bed. Even through the repeating noise of the shower and the water splashing all over, Logan could hear the slight buzzing of the TV in the other room.
His enhanced ability to perceive sound also made his perfectly capable of hearing the knocking on the door of their bedroom.
He could hear Gina's footsteps towards the door and the brief greeting she shared with whoever it was as she opened it.
He could also listen to the visitor's voice and make out who it was.
A rich voice with fat, Mediterranean accent, brief and secured words.
'Mom'.
"Where's your spouse?"
"You can call him 'Logan', mom..."
"Never mind", she responded, the sound of the shower drawing her attention. "Is he coming out anytime?"
"He's in there for above an hour, so I must suppose he'll be soon out..."
Uh-Oh. Hearing this, Logan decided to stay in there as long as it took for the grumpy hag to get her ass out of there. His healing factor made him almost immortal, so he could easily win over her if he had to stay there until one of them died.
"He's there for an hour? Are you sure he's okay? Go check him out...what if he drowned and the water's still spending for no reason?"
Logan's claws spontaneously snickted out. Maybe if she kept on like this she wouldn't have to wait and die from natural reasons.
"Mom, why are you here? Weren't you supposed to be sleeping?"
"Oh, darling, I'm going insomniac again. Must be old Cornutino. Did you know how loud can a cat's snoring become? Especially a cat at his age..."
"And why would you come here, of all places?" Gina's voice seemed stern.
"Well, where else would I go, if not my only daughter's room? Just wanted to make sure you're all right."
"I'm with Logan, mom, with him I'm always all right."
"Oh, don't let me get started on him, Gina...Of all men, why should you get him?-There are so many decent Sicilian boys back home... Real, trustworthy men-unlike this low-life."
"Mom..." Gina's protest was supposed to interrupt her mother's growing rumbling, but it only got lost in Elisa's trail of words.
"...You know Flavio, the handsome son of Mr.Ganucci?-his older brother was seduced by a Russian wench and they took off-their father disowned him and now Flavio is the only heir to 90 acres of olive trees-he's still available and there's no woman on sight yet-"
"Maybe 'cause he's gay" Logan thought impishly.
"-so as soon as we get home I can give them a call-come on, Gina, nothing is lost yet with that animal-you can divorce him and since he hasn't knocked you up yet it will be as it never happened-and Flavio is so kind to the ladies-"
Logan chuckled freely under the disguise of the water's splashing. There was NO WAY his wife would leave THIS body for a bunch of olive trees at Sicily. Okay, maybe being naked in the bathroom always made him overconfident, but come ON. Things have changed since the 50's. The old hag should have known that. Especially an intellectual woman like Gina was close to the feminist one; the type of woman that would never accept to be sold for a big piece of land.
"-And you seem to need to get away from this place-this bald man on the chair is eerie-he can't even move his own wheelchair, for god's sake!-"
That was because Xavier had locked in a closet his high-tech hovering wheelchair in favour of a normal, plain one, that wouldn't provoke suspicions from Elisa. He wasn't used to moving the chair with his own hands.
"-and the cooking-don't let me get started with the cooking-almost none of the girls can cook a decent household dinner-so I promised to Jean and Rogue to show them how to cook a nice homemade Sicilian Pizza!"
Did she actually use an exclamation spot at the end of her sentence? I guess the rumbling grumbling had come to a halt for tonight.
"And that's what I had come to tell you tonight. I need someone to give me a ride to the city tomorrow..."
...and never bring her back.
"...so that I can buy the ingredients for the pizza and some things I will need for my residence here."
Wait a minute-she said *residence*? How long does she intend to live here? Long enough if she wants to buy things for herself...
"What do you want to buy, mom?" the ever-logical voice of Gina's was heard, feeling like a palm tree in the middle of a desert of grumbling.
"Oh, you know...I don't like the curtains in my room... And I guess I'll stay long enough to not have to suffer seeing them every time I wake up..."
OK that seemed pretty permanent to Logan, from his point of view. Slipping on the bathtub floor was inevitable by the time these bad news reached his ears. His head bumped on the side of the bathtub and nobody heard the thump coming from the bathroom. Not even Elisa with her unnaturally good (for her age) hearing.
He remained fainted like that for several minutes, until his healing factor kicked in. When he came to his senses, his mother-in-law had gone.
"I guess that hurting myself satisfied enough the hag to make her leave. Hey, maybe I should have done this from the beginning." he thought at himself, grinning and cupping his good-as-new forehead.
As he exited the bathroom, trying to look sexy in the towel around his waist, he saw Gina looking at him with a sweet look-like she wanted to ask him for something.
"Logan, I know that you haven't gone on a ride with your motorbike for weeks..."
He didn't like the sound of that...
"...so what would you say about doing it tomorrow, and give my mother a ride to the town as well?"
Ow crap!
***************************************************************
A FEW HOURS LATER
Hank was leaving his lab for the first time in a few days, having a mutant-sensitive guest and all.
He had just finished making all those highly needed image inducers and he felt really good for himself, since the cranky Italian lady would remain as a guest for a long period of time and the inducers he made would prove really important for the stability of the oncoming semester's classes.
He felt like he was worthy of a small celebration. Some soda with a bunch of Twinkies from the kitchen would be nice. His Twinkie stash in the lab had been long gone (with him being near it all those days, it was at least expected), so he would also have to renew it by bringing new ones from the kitchen's secret side closet.
Silently walking on the tips of his toes, in a desperate attempt not to wake anybody with his clumsy footsteps, Hank approached the kitchen.
He casually entered it without being alarmed from the fact that the kitchen's lights were turned on.
As he walked in, he noticed a little throbbing hunching black figure beside the kitchen table. Strange murmuring sounds were coming from the figure's direction.
Leaning closer, Hank realised that the figure was Logan's mother-in-law, who was praying in the middle of the night, in the kitchen, being on the floor on her knees and also bending down as much as she could. Her long grey hair was caught on a big ponytail, left loose to swing around in each movement.
As the old woman slowly stood up, unaware of the new presence in the room, Hank psychically prepared himself to greet her.
But then he remembered something.
His image inducer had been left behind in the lab.
He ran for the door and the safety of the darkness beyond it, just as she cocked her head towards him, barely enough to catch a brief glimpse of him and scream in terror...or excitement:
"DEMON!! DEMON!!"
She ran after whatever she saw, hunting it with her big crucifix, as it seemed to be obviously a work of the devil.
As she made it into the dark big hall and saw nothing, she realised that the creature was gone, frightened from her grace and morality, and had retracted itself into the darkness.
As soon as she was back at the kitchen and continued her prayers, the evil demon known as Dr.Henry McCoy retracted himself from the darkness of the small space behind the TV, forgetting any thoughts of Twinkies and soda for tonight and swearing to send Kurt to retrieve the Twinkies next time... this way the old hag might get herself a real demon.