Many thanks to those who have enjoyed my crazy idea and have reviewed to say so. =)

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Pale fingers of golden and pink light reached through the dark shadows of trees to glint off of metal and plastic armor. The unusually colorful dawn might have been considered something beautiful if any of the four boys wandering in the forest cared enough to look. As it was, three of them were irritable at having to be awake so early. The fourth was annoyed with the other three for, well, just being themselves.

"I told you," he was insisting, "I really saw something around here yesterday. We just need to keep looking."

A taller, darker young man finished his deep yawn. "We're looking, Pietro, we're looking," he said condescendingly.

"Maybe if you guys had come with me to look yesterday, you would believe me."

"Well, we're here now. So shut up and find this thing for us." Lance watched the white-haired Pietro streak off into the gloom and decided that sometimes it wasn't worth it to be the leader of a group. At least not when it meant dealing with such a spoiled, whiny brat, who was probably making the whole thing up just to get the other two angry at him, Lance, for making them wake up early to go on this wild goose chase. He turned to brush some dried pine needles off of a shoulder. A sparkle in the dark nearby caught his eye. One of the trees seemed a little shinier than the others nearby, if that was possible. It almost looked a bit like plastic, where the ray of light had struck it.

Lance approached the tree and peered closely. A small, black box was attached to the tree, directly in a beam of light. The reflection was what had caught his attention. But why would a box like this be attached to a tree? He ran a finger over it until he felt a small button. He paused, on the verge of pressing it. Suddenly he leapt backward a little in fright at a loud voice directly behind him.

"Wha-ja find?"

He glared over his shoulder at Todd, who was staring up at him intently from his crouch on the ground. "I don't know. I'm about to find out."

"Oh, well lemme see!" Todd leapt over Lance's head, aiming to land gripping the tree, facing down at the box, Lance supposed. But that never happened. Todd's body struck the tree with an odd metallic clang and he slid to the forest floor. Lance hardly noticed that though. A tree didn't go clang when you hit it. He reached out a hand to the tree and felt its smooth, cool surface. He trailed his hand to the right, where, instead of curving away like a tree trunk should, the surface continued straight into empty air. Odd.

Todd had shaken the dazed expression from his face and was peering up at the little box. "I seen somethin' like that before. It's like that thing that one X-Man wears to school." He straightened up enough to touch it. "You just gotta push this button here and--"

They both staggered back when a patch of the forest flickered away to reveal a hulking green metallic wall. As they backed up, it began to take on a vague rocket-like shape, although it wasn't like any rocket made on Earth that they knew of.

"I think we found whatever Pietro was talkin' about," Todd finally said. Then he yelled into the forest, "Hey guys! Come over here!"

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The sun had shed its rising colors, but it was still very early when a larger group of people set out into the forest on a mission. The Planet Express crew was listening to jokes and tales as told by Kurt and Kitty, who were competing to be the most impressive storyteller. Well, Leela and Fry were paying attention to the stories. Bender was daydreaming about the secret stashes of alcohol and porn stowed away on the ship.

When the earth beneath their feet trembled and groaned, the X-Men all turned to look at each other. "The Brotherhood," Scott spoke aloud for them all.

"Huh? Since when do earthquakes have families?"

But no one answered Fry's stupid question, because they were all running forward. Leela shrugged and followed the X-Men. Fry and Bender decided it was better to run than to be stranded in the woods.

When they all reached the ship, Toad was just leaping out of the doorway clutching a boxy package to his chest. He snickered and said to himself, "All right. Who said aliens only abducted drunk people? This proves they just make them drunk to cover it all up. I smell a conspiracy. But the government's just gonna have to wait for me to try some of this myself." He set the object on the ground carefully.

"My beer!" Bender shouted. "He's got my beer, the little bastard!" He tore out of the cover of the trees in a rage. Toad was so terrified at the strange sight of a bloodthirsty robot that he froze where he cowered. Jean took the opportunity to lift him into the air, immobile, and luckily for him, out of Bender's murderous reach. Instead, the robot clutched the package of alcohol to his chest. Around him, the rest of the X-Men poured into the clearing to seek out and subdue the rest of the Brotherhood.

On the other side of the ship, Fred, the Blob, had been dragging something heavy through the trees. At the commotion, he had been thankful to let his burden drop into the undergrowth, where it settled into a hollow beneath a leafy bush. Wiping sweat from his forehead, he went to see what the noise was all about. When he rounded the edge of the ship, he looked down to see an odd-looking woman. She was actually kind of pretty, he thought, even if she had purple hair and ... wait, what kind of woman only had one gigantic eye in the middle of her forehead? He stopped in surprise and looked down into that very angry eye.

Leela took the opportunity to leap into the air and direct a spinning kick to Blob's face. He grunted in pain where she had struck him in the temple, but it didn't seem to faze him much. She began punching his generous gut. She was trying vainly to make some impression when he reached out large hands to pin her arms to her sides and lift her in the air. She struggled and kicked as hard as she could, but it didn't seem to be doing much good.

Suddenly a bright red beam like that of a large laser gun erupted from over her shoulder and struck Blob in the face. He staggered back and dropped her, where she tucked and rolled away, to spring back to an alert pose.

"That won't do you much good on him." Leela turned to see Scott crouched behind her. He smiled, "You should leave him to us."

She gave a soft snort. Like she would give up protecting her ship from a foe because some male thought she was too weak to handle the situation. The kid just didn't know anything. Then she saw the laser beam shoot out of that ridiculous thing he wore over his eyes. Okay, maybe he was a little better equipped for this situation than she. Of course, if she had a laser gun on her, she'd show him. That reminded her of the ship and she decided to leave the battle to Scott – just this once.

As she rounded the hull of the ship again, Jean passed her on her way to help subdue Fred. Both women stumbled as the ground buckled beneath them. Leela saw a tall, dark-haired boy ahead with his eyes rolled back to show only their whites. A petite brunette girl rushed forward to him, shouting for him to stop. It dawned on Leela that perhaps he was the cause of the ground shuddering beneath her feet. Another of those mutant power things, she supposed. Well, that was easy enough to put a stop to. She flew at him, foot snapping out to hit him solidly between the shoulder blades. He dropped like a stone and the earth stilled.

The girl dropped to her knees next to the fallen boy. She was one of Xavier's, Leela remembered. But it seemed like these boys were enemies of the Xavier students. Leela was a bit confused but decided to ask questions later. She left the kids to check on the condition of her ship. Charles had said it would be protected from ignorant teenagers like this....

The other two members of the Brotherhood were subdued. Toad was still cowering out of reach of Bender, who was drinking one of his beers and clutching his stack of rescued porn to his chest. Pietro's legs were pinwheeling uselessly as he dangled from the huge hands of the mutant who had been introduced as Dr. Hank McCoy. One of the ship's laser guns lay at his feet. Hank noticed Leela's gaze fall on it.

"Unfortunately, this young man managed to find that and Kitty disabled it to prevent him from doing any damage. Her phasing tends to destroy electronics permanently, however, so we apologize for the loss of your weapon."

"As long as no one got hurt," Leela replied. She climbed up the stairs leading into the ship to see what else the boys hand gotten into. The insides of the ship were already a mess from the crash, so it was hard to say what destruction they had caused. At least they had found only one of the laser guns on board. One of the lockers must have broken open in the impact, she guessed, and decided it was the best time to find the other two so that they wouldn't fall into the wrong hands as well.

As she walked through the tilted corridor to the locker room, she noticed the door to the engines was propped open with a small black object. Crouching down, she saw it was a broken chunk of dark matter. A few whole pieces were scattered through the hallway, but not the other half of that particular piece. She wondered how this ball had managed to break when all the others were still intact, and when the stuff was so incredibly dense ... and where the rest was. Those four boys couldn't have known what it was. They couldn't have moved it if they did. She needed all the robotic strength of Bender to move even small pieces. It just must have broken in the crash somehow and the other shards had scattered, were buried under the other loose junk littering the ship. Yes, that must be it.

Straightening, she continued to the locker room to gather the weapons and to investigate for further damage to the ship.