Logan kept strolling through the really huge main lounge, his eyes quickly exploring the area.
A woman he used to know, Dazzler, was currently on stage, carelessly singing some old song, in order to give the room a "swinging 60's" feeling.
He ignored her melodic voice and kept looking around for the faces he knew.
When he woke up that very evening, he first went looking for Bobby. Arriving in his room, he saw that there was no door to keep him from peeking inside. The door was actually at the other side of the room, firmly embedded on the wall, and from the smell of it the Carmen Electra cyborg was sandwiched between those two pieces of steel and inevitably out of order.
The animalistic scents coming from Bobby's bed betrayed that the cyborg had failed. It seemed that Bobby and that green-haired wench had done some very indecent stuff on that bed, and the Seductress had nothing to do with this.
So Logan promptly went looking for Jubilee, but she was nowhere to be found. She wasn't in her cabin, but she had never set foot in there since the beginning of the journey anyway.
Next place to look for her was the gay bar where she liked to hang around, "Rectum". But the bar was on a ball-masque party that was raving that night, and Logan could only smell cross-dressing men in there, so he didn't bother walking in and be shooed for not coming in dressed as "Cleopatra", "Snow-White" or something equal to those, like everybody else did.
So his next logical stop was the main lounge, which had Dazzler singing for one-night-only. Someone had to be there, considering how Dazzler was an old friend and all. And he was right; Bobby and the jinxy Seaweed-head were there, their butts resting on the cushy chairs on one of the tables planted all over the lounge. Her accursed karate-bunny was also there, resting beside the chair's foot.
He tried to approach them, but he froze in his shoes as he saw the people filling up the two closest tables to Bobby's; the proud members of W.O.L.F. seemed to have recognised Iceman as "that guy that makes ice cubes and hangs around our adored Wolvie" so they had stayed close to him in case Wolverine himself showed up. Clever groupies, they were probably thinking much more clearly when their idol wasn't around.
As the head of the green-haired groupie (currently relaxed on her seat) began turning around like a satellite dish trying to spot Wolvish presence, Logan ducked under a table and almost made a waiter bump on him. The waiter avoided crashing onto Logan, but he couldn't also avoid losing the dishes he was carrying from his hands. The crashing noise turned all the attention in the room towards the poor waiter. Logan just looked at him pleadingly from under the table.
They exchanged glances for a moment...
...and the waiter finally looked away, pretending that he just slipped on something and lost his balance. Picking up whatever wasn't smashed into too little pieces to handle, the waiter got the hell out of there.
That whole fuss with the broken dishes averted the attention of the crowd to that, so nobody had the luck to notice a bunch of heavily armed men making their way around the lounge, positioning themselves in every single side of the room, eventually surrounding all of the passengers currently hanging around in the lounge.
Then the ship's Captain, looking rather impatient, came up the stage and ushered Dazzler out of it, whispering something about emergency issues to her. Dazzler got pissed off at having her singing interrupted in the middle of a song that was holy to her ("Put the blame on mame", that is) and muttered something about never singing on this fish-smelling wretch again.
The Captain quickly swallowed all of her nagging and as soon as she was off, he got back to the onstage mic and grabbed it.
"Oh, no, don't tell me he's going to sing again!" a frustrated Bobby said rather loudly, making the armed guys look at him with really mean eyes.
Maybe he deserved Evita after all, was what came to Logan's mind, still hiding under the table, waiting for the right moment to strike.
"Ladies and gentlemen..." the Captain began talking to the mic, "...or should I say: filthy muties, grudge of this planet! You really believed you could have your own, very special "mutie-only cruise"?
It was logical that the beginning of his speech resulted to some very agitated audience, most of them looking around in confusion, and finally in surprise when they noticed the strange men around them drawing their guns out. A loud collective muttering filled the lounge, making most voices undecipherable.
"Shut up. SHUT UP!!" The Captain screamed, making everyone stop talking and pay attention to his words instead. How could someone terrorise a crowd if he couldn't even demand their attention, after all?
"Okay. And now that I have your attention, I can explain to you what all this fuss is about. We are a new branch of The Friends of Humanity."
Most of the people in the audience gasped at the revelation. Bobby instead choked on his drink.
"What are the F.o.H. doing here?" he whispered to an equally dumbfounded Evita next to him. It's needless to say that most of the F.o.H. Captain's audience also resumed commenting on that revelation of his.
"Ahem." the fraud Captain coughed in the mic, causing everyone to shut up again. "You can now realise that the whole "mutant-cruise" thing was a trap for you and all of your fellow muties to come onto this ship and suffer a horrible death in the middle of the ocean. You see, the whole ship is loaded with explosives that will go off in much less than an hour. Thus, this will be the perfect example for all mutants to stop fighting for rights they don't deserve. It will also teach our fellow humans that they have to stand up to the enemy and refuse to give ground to the filthy muties. You will all be an example to the rest of the world today."
Everyone began panicking at the deadly predicament they were facing, but the Captain resumed talking before being interrupted again.
"The F.o.H. organised this set-up right after we bought the S.S.Lamancha, that up to now was a ship ready to go on retirement. You all fell for this. Even two poor mute girls mistook it for a "mute-only" cruise and set foot on this condemned boat. But we wouldn't allow two fellow humans to die with the rest of the mutant scum in here. So the girls are currently resting in our F.o.H. chopper, ready to disembark this death-trap. And excuse us, but the same goes for the members of F.o.H. that will soon escape this cruising bomb and leave you to blow up in pieces."
"What the hell...?" Logan thought from under his table. His claws itched to come out and play, but he felt like he should stay there and listen to some more.
Most of the audience began shrieking in panic as the Captain began snickering. You see, they might be mutants, but none of them was a fully trained mutant that could jump into fight anytime.
"I'm sorry, but the mutants in this room aren't going to die in the explosion."
The mutant audience began sighing in relief.
"You all know too much now that I relieved my urge to announce my whole plan to a portion of my victims. You have to die NOW." he said, nodding to the armed men surrounding the audience to start killing everyone. The mutant crowd began screaming in panic, Bobby began getting up from his seat, and Logan placed his palm in the underside of the table he was hiding under, ready to pop out and start slicing F.o.H. members up like a primitive mixer.
But they all stopped as another bunch of armed men, dressed in khakis this time, suddenly appeared and started knocking out the F.o.H. members. The mutants, still seated in their tables, began cheering for the new coming saviours, but soon shut their mouths as the men in khakis knocked out all of the F.o.H. members and then pointed their guns at the crowd, taking the place of the men they attacked.
Another man ascended the stage and stood next to a dumbfounded F.o.H. Captain. It was Jack! Next to him, two men in khakis carried Jubilee's. She was fine and awake, but she was tied like a salami with some ropes and was currently pissed as hell.
"Oh my god, JUBILEE!!" Logan yelled in surprise. An armed man in khakis that stood next to his table heard him and pointed his gun under the table. Logan silently walked out and stood next to the man, now being exposed. He wanted to wait and see what it all was about before he jumped into action.
"Oh, I see that Logan is here as well. I knew that keeping you as a hostage would prove useful" he said turning to Jubilee, who was muffled and couldn't curse at him in return. "I guess we can begin now." he said, and pushed the speechless Captain away from the mic, grabbing it and talking in a stand-up-comedy manner;
"You see our captain here? It seems that he intended to blow the S.S. Lamancha up, and as a good captain he wouldn't even go down with his ship! Well, there will be no blow-ups in the middle of the ocean. Even as we're talking, an especially designed cyborg is on the wheel and turning the ship back towards New York."
A stunned silence was the crowd's response. They had enough twists thrown in their faces up to now, so they were wise enough not to cheer or wail or even comment on his sayings.
"You see, me and the organisation I work for have seen through the evil plans of F.o.H. So we got in this ship disguised as mutants and prepared our own little plan, though still based in our beloved Captain's makings."
"Who's your boss?" Bobby yelled from his seat, provoking a shushing noise from Evita's side.
"My boss is named Osama Bin Laden, and I'm working for Al Qaeda. Happy now?"
The crowd forgot all about its manners and began screaming.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Jack screamed, pissed at the lack of spirit. "The ship IS going to blow up, but you guys don't have to be inside it when the time comes. We don't have any problem yet with mutants. Just with Americans."
"Why are we turning back? What ARE your purposes toward this boat?" Bobby asked again, causing Evita to slap the back of his head.
"You're an accountant, not a damned lawyer! Let the others make the questions." she whispered bossily. Bobby's reaction wasn't as sheepish as before, but he still swallowed it.
"Let me respond to that as well. The ship is full of explosives. Now imagine it being blown up in the middle of New York's port. Or even next to the Statue of Liberty. Now that would be an example for the world, not a stupid boat accident in the middle of nowhere." Jack said and a lunatic smile flashed on his face.
"Now that's what I call courage. Your dimwit of a boss isn't even on the ship, now, is he?" Bobby kept questioning him like a journalist that had found the news of the century. He even slapped Evita's hand away before it reached his head again.
"Oh, Osama IS on the boat. He was simply bored of these boring procedures and went on to party in some ball masque in a bar. He's not much of the guy that follows typical procedures. But he's still on this boat."
Right then, the Captain was out of his mind. He punched Jack right on the face, letting him collapse on the floor and came up to the mic. "You can't go messing my plans like this! Find your own ship, you damned Muslim!!! You can't just mess with us! WE ARE THE FRIENDS OF HUMANITY!!!!" he yelled, almost out of breath.
The crowd began screaming in panic.
Jack stood up and grabbed the mic. "I don't friggin care about your lame-ass plans! We don't give a damn about whose ship this is because it's going to fuckin blow up anyway! And if you're the friggin Friends of Humanity, then WE'RE THE FRIGGIN AL QAEDA!!" he screamed at his face, out of control.
The crowd screamed in greater panic than before.
"AND I'M THE FRIGGIN POLARIS!!! CAN NOW EVERYBODY SHUT UP?!?!?" Lorna screamed from the middle of the lounge, where she had landed. A large hole, which she had opened up in order to come inside, was now on the ceiling of the lounge. All the guns from the fallen F.o.H. members and the Al Qaeda guys in khakis were also lying next to her feet, drawn by her magnetic powers. She had finally found the cruising boat, after a whole day of flying above the ocean.
Now everyone began screaming in panic, much louder than before. Half of the audience stomped out from the lounge, and the ones that remained only stayed out of curiosity.
Logan and Bobby, from entirely different points, went "Uh oh..." at the same time.
"Now where is my Bobby..." she said, and her eyes fell on the table where her beloved Bobby sat, accompanied by a woman with hair almost as cool and green as hers.
Lorna walked towards them, lounge tables flying out of her way, as she was walking in a straight line that led to Bobby and the other woman. A cute bunny was also next to their feet.
"Bobby..." she said to him, instantly abandoning the "tough bitch" image and adopting a "caring lover" one.
"It's 'Robbie'", Evita corrected the unknown magnetic woman. Did she know Bobb...eer, Robbie? What did she want with him? She certainly seemed like a former girlfriend...and not the indifferent kind. Evita instantly realised the threat that the newcomer posed to her love affair with Robbie. She had better show some spirit if she didn't want to lose him over that hideous green-haired bitch.
"Bobby..." Lorna kept on, ignoring the bizarre corrections from the other woman, "...I...I know that I had been less than understanding those last weeks with you. But it was until the other day that I realised I loved you. At the wedding you said that you loved me, Bobby. You still do, right? Or did a simple crappy cruise change you so quickly?"
"It's ROBBIE! R-O-B-B-I-E!" Evita repeated. Although everyone could tell that the misnaming was the last thing that bothered her in Lorna's words.
"What's with that bitch anyway? Does she look after you new pet bunny or something? Or is she Jubilee's girlfriend?"
"M-mffff-mrrrrrgggghhhh!!!!" was all that a frustrated Jubilee could say through the duct tape covering her mouth, still tied up and in the arms of two huge Al Qaeda guys.
"I'm sorry, I always thought you were gay." Lorna said apologetically. She then turned her attention back to Bobby and the pet-care woman.
"So, what do you have to say?"
Bobby/Robbie just stood there, speechless. He had been Robbie those few days. He met a new love interest, hanged around with her and his friends (or just her, more likely) and found a new meaning in his always-do-gooding mess of a life. And now Lorna herself had came out of nowhere and was calling him with his old name, urging him back to his old life, which could worth something after all. So it had come to this. He had to choose -yet again. Would he give up everything and live a new life with Evita? Or this new life would be proven a mistake as soon as they got out of the happy cruise and got used to the rhythm of a normal life? What could be the best for him? Lorna or Evita? His life with the X-Men or a new one with his non-X-woman girlfriend? Or maybe...?
Yes. He had now made his choice.
Too bad that in all that big pause, Evita couldn't stand it and she answered for herself;
"That's my boyfriend over here, you crazy bitch! What right do you have to claim him from me?"
Lorna shot a look at Evita.
Evita shot it back at Lorna.
The whole room froze, focusing on the incoming catfight.
Jack, still onstage, helped the F.o.H. captain on his feet and they both watched with a wicked grin.
Logan raised an eyebrow and prayed that Lorna would take that bitch out of the way for him.
The W.O.L.F. members, still remaining in the room after realising that Wolvie was there, also looked at both green-haired psychos.
Jubilee, always in her salami imitation, silently hoped that Lorna would pay for calling her a lesbian.
Bobby decided to let it go. This situation could only help him confirm his choice.
The DJ responsible for the earlier show from Dazzler, made the strategic choice to play "Carmina Burana" on the speakers. The epic sound inwardly prepared everyone present for the equally epic incoming battle.
Lorna locked eyes with Evita, letting her know that she would be her next target.
Evita got up from her chair and they started walking in a circle, facing each other viciously.
"Bring it on, biatch." Evita spoke up, twirling a finger around her left skull earring.
"You had it coming, whore." Polaris responded with a snobbish grin.
Summoning her magnetic powers, Polaris made all the abandoned furniture in the lounge fly in circles around Evita and, eventually, straight toward her. But somehow, that lucky bitch avoided all of the incoming chairs and tables, without even moving around to dodge them.
One of the chairs hit Bobby lightly on the thigh. A table flew straight towards Logan, but he popped up his claws and sliced it up in milliseconds, causing his groupies to cheer in awe. Another one landed just inches from Jubilee's head, who had now been set on the floor by her guards.
"What?!?" Lorna mouthed in surprise. Not only she missed, but she hit nearly everyone else present but her actual target.
Evita just smirked.
Lorna summoned more chairs, even some guns that the F.o.H. thugs had on them earlier and magnetically threw them with force to her enemy.
All of them miserably missed, crashing on the wall behind the ever-smirking Evita.
Polaris, being frustrated more than ever in her life before (except maybe for the time that Alex dumped her at the altar, which caused her losing all these cool wedding gifts) summoned all of her power and unleashed a massive charge of magnetic force towards everywhere. The pure energy lashed roaring towards every direction possible, pretty much in a Dragonball style.
When everything calmed down, Polaris looked around to see what she had achieved.
Bobby was now thrown off his chair, sitting on the floor and rubbing his aching rear from the fall.
Logan's hair was sticking up more than ever before, having been immensely magnetised.
The two guards above jubilee had now been thrown back and had hit the wall, falling unconscious.
The ship's captain had probably been thrown out of the room, and the guy that stood beside his was still in front of the microphone, though ducking all this time.
Some group of girls were picking themselves from the floor on the other side of the room.
The bunny was still in the same place, having grabbed on the carpet with its huge claws all that time (CLAWS?).
But her opponent was still standing where she stood before, still smirking, not even a single green hair of hers touched.
"Aaaaargh!!! HOW ON EARTH DOES SHE DO THAT?????!?" Lorna yelled to nobody in particular in order to express her utter frustration.
Logan sneaked up next to her and tipped her shoulder.
"What now?" Lorna shot at him with ultra bitchiness.
Logan just gave her the hint she needed. "Her power's that way. She jinxes people around her, especially those who oppose her. You'll never get her by using your powers. Try the traditional way instead."
"Oh yeah? And what's that way?" Lorna asked.
Evita just looked at the two of them in confusion. Why would that growly friend of Robbie's coach that total bitch against his best pal's girlfriend?
"Your fists, of course." Logan said, completing his little coaching session with Lorna.
"I'm gonna kick your ass in the actual meaning of the word then, bitch." Lorna said, turning her attention to her enemy.
"C'mon. Make. My. Day." was the other woman's response, just as "Carmina Burana" was close to reaching its climax.
They lashed at each other and began cat-fighting...or bitch-fighting is more like it in that instance.
Everyone present who wasn't still dizzy from Polaris' magnetic attack focused at the ongoing fight. A cloud almost formed around the two contestants, green hair flashing around once in a while, growls and yelling and punching and crashing could be heard all the time from that direction.
Logan couldn't believe his eyes; never in his entire memorised life had two women fought for his eyes, yet Popsicle could from now on brag about that happening to him.
Bobby instead watched with mysterious shadows over his eyes, almost looking like he wasn't really interested in the outcome, but simply curious.
Jubilee felt lucky that her eyes hadn't been tied as well and she was granted to see that spectacle.
A couple of minutes later, both women withdrawed from the fight, seemingly tired. The marks on both of them betrayed very minor injuries, and nobody seemed to be winning up to then. And that was exactly what was happening. Evita's jinx factor never allowed Lorna to manage a good strike on her, but on the other hand Evita was way too inexperienced in close combat to aggressively pose a threat to Lorna's well-being.
So none of them had the upper hand. Evita could see that her usefulness in battle would prove fatal for her eventually. She had to do something before they resumed fighting.
Lorna leered at her opponent through short breaths. That lucky bitch would miraculously dodge all of her heavy-handed attacks. But she knew that if they kept going like that she wouldn't keep dodging her forever. A vein on her forehead began pulsing and she looked at Bobby's current girlfriend through burrowed, sweaty brows.
"I'll get you eventually, little whore. I'll get you..." she whispered to her general direction.
Evita knew that the other woman knew well what she was saying. She thought quickly, trying to hastily come up with an idea that would make her a winner.
Her eyes travelled over her ever-faithful pet. Fluffy was still sitting next to her chair, snorting all the time.
"That's it! I'll use my karate-bunny to kick that bitch's ass! As soon as her face will hit the floor, it won't matter if I used my pet to knock her out!" were the brilliant thoughts that nestled into her mind.
But the way she expressed her ideas wasn't equally brilliant.
"KARATE-BUNNY! GET THAT GREEN-HAIRED BITCH!!!" she screamed with a really nasty voice.
Everyone turned his attention to the invincible bunny now. Fluffy hid a bunny-smirk under his bunny-moustache, got up from the place he was sitting on and approached the battle scene.
Then the bunny promptly proceeded to kicking the ass of BOTH green haired-bitches!
"Ohmigod..." Jubilee thought to herself, since she couldn't speak up for it anyway. "Stupid ole Evita never clarified WHICH green-haired bitch her bunny should beat up...way to go, Smart-ass."
Now both Evita and Lorna laid unconscious on the lounge's floor. The bunny scooped its feet on their limp bodies and then made its glorious, dramatic exit.
Logan, surprised at the turn of events, looked at Bobby, who looked at the two women that loved (?) him, who in turn looked nowhere, since their eyes were closed and unconscious.
Logan approached Bobby and put a hand on his shoulder. "How do you feel about this Bob...eer, can I call you Bobby?"
"I'm not sure how I should feel. Look at those two," he said, nodding at the unconscious women, "they practically fought for me. I should feel flattered because of this, but, I don't know. How can somebody respect a woman who jumps in a catfight for a man's sake? Those two had no tact, no self-respect, not anything...I think I'll just-"
"AHEM! EXCUSE ME!" Jack screamed from his former position, beside the mic. "Now that those two bitches are out of the picture, can I proceed to taking the damned ship over and making the Americans pay for their crimes against Islam?"
Logan, Bobby, the W.O.L.F. members and some other mutants that had remained there all turned towards the wannabe-hijacker. They all yelled in unison: "NO!!!"
"NO? NOOO? WHY NOT? I'LL GET YOU FOR THAT! I WILL HAVE YOU KILLED, TIED ON THE BOAT'S GRATINGS AND BLOWN UP ALONG WITH THE REST OF THIS FREAKIN SHIP!"
"You and what army...?" Logan calmly said, pointing at Jack all the Al Qaeda men that had lost their weapons during Lorna's appearance and were later knocked out when Lorna unleashed her massive magnetic charge.
"Uhm...good point." Jack whispered, trying to find a solution to his minor problem. "A-ha!" he exclaimed, getting a small gun from his pocket. "Here" he said, as he shot Logan.
Now, Jack wasn't really a man of action. He was just a scientist, who happened to admire Osama Bin Laden and work for him. So the bullet barely missed Logan, only managing to shave the tip of his left sideburn.
Logan put his left hand on his sideburn, where there should be more hair at the time. He growled menacingly and leered at Jacks' direction.
His W.O.L.F. groupies however didn't have the same cool reaction. After gasping at the man's audacity to shoot Logan in the face, they collected themselves together and marched towards the stage, looking at Jack as if he was a little chicken that would provide their prey.
"Lynch the bastard!" Marie, the proud W.O.L.F. leader ordered the others, as she led the lynch mob towards Jack herself.
"Uh-Oh..." Jack thought, giving some rapid thinking to the situation, trying to find a way out. He eventually thought of something.
"I'm sorry it had to be this way...." he whispered to nobody in particular, as he reached for something into his large pocket. He picked out a magazine, he stroked its cover with regret while saying goodbye to it, and then proceeded to throw it in front of the lynch mob threatening his life.
The W.O.L.F pack leader looked at the magazine with curiosity... "What the hell? A Playgirl?"
Picking it up, she quickly raced through the magazine's pages and stopped in some certain ones. Her eyes grew really large, as she was rendered speechless from what she saw. She eventually looked at the very weel-known figure at the cover and gawked as well. She then turned to the other W.O.L.F. members and said with a shaky voice:
"Wo-wolvie...is...in this mag..."
Another groupie approached her, put her hand on the magazine, trying to take it from the leader and see what's inside. The leader resisted. She would never let that magazine go. So the other groupie had to look at tit while it still was in the other one's hands. And she did.
"OH MY GOD! THERE'S WOLVIE IN THIS MAGAZINE!!! AND HE'S NAKED!!!!" She screamed with a pitch voice, causing all the others to pay total attention to her.
Upon hearing these words, everyone lashed at those two and the Playgirl, wanting to get a grip on it and look at the heavenly pictures.
Soon, all of the groupies were fighting over the tortured Playgirl, slapping each other in the attempt to get the Playgirl for themselves. A big cloud began to form around them.
Jubilee, upon hearing what that Playgirl was about, ripped apart her restraints with an unusually superhuman strength and lashed into the big fighting cloud as well. "I'm sorry Wolvie" she apologised while still in mid-air.
Jack couldn't help but smile at his own brilliance. "See, Wolverine? This magazine was really important to me, but I had to sacrifice it in order to get the perfect distraction. Now I can easily achive what I want."
Wolverine was a bit overwhelmed at his naked form being sold for a distraction, but he still fought the urge to jump in the fighting cloud and rip the offending magazine apart. He had to face the imminent danger on this boat and that was more important. He still didn't answer to Jack though.
"See this little beeper here? It's no normal beeper you know. It controls the explosives downstairs. I can control if they're going to go off instantly, or if there's going to be a deadline before they go off. Now, everyone had better back off, or I'll make them blow up in a second and we're all going straight to hell. Capisce?"
Bobby and Logan nodded with a hypnotised expression. Everyone else was busy trying to get their hands on the Playgirl's issue from April 1973.
Jack looked at his beeper and gasped in surprise. "I don't get it...why are the explosives to go off in half an hour? There must have been some mistake..." he said and began hitting the buttons on the beeper, cursing and cussing all the time.
Bobby and Logan looked at Jack with dismay.
"I think I know what happened..." Bobby pointed out at a desperate Jack. "When Polaris set off her major magnetic charge, it must have somehow affected your beeper. I don't think you can do anything else with that beeper anymore."
"DAMN! This explosion must NOT be thrown in the wind! I must get this ship somewhere where it would pose a threat to more people's lives! I think the Canary Islands must be close enough to reach in half an hour!" he said and then went off to find his Seductress and change the boat's directions.
"Shit! This madman wants to kill as many people as possible to make his point! I'm going after him. Drake, get Jubilee out of this fight and help her evacuate the ship! You get me? Nobody must be on this boat in 28 minutes from now." Logan was put into 'leader mode' instantly.
"Understood. But, Logan...what about you?" Bobby voiced his concerns. Logan going all sacrificial was such a cliche.
"No worries. A petty explosion should be no match for my healing factor. Now get to work, boy!" he said, and then went after the Al Qaeda scientist.
A woman he used to know, Dazzler, was currently on stage, carelessly singing some old song, in order to give the room a "swinging 60's" feeling.
He ignored her melodic voice and kept looking around for the faces he knew.
When he woke up that very evening, he first went looking for Bobby. Arriving in his room, he saw that there was no door to keep him from peeking inside. The door was actually at the other side of the room, firmly embedded on the wall, and from the smell of it the Carmen Electra cyborg was sandwiched between those two pieces of steel and inevitably out of order.
The animalistic scents coming from Bobby's bed betrayed that the cyborg had failed. It seemed that Bobby and that green-haired wench had done some very indecent stuff on that bed, and the Seductress had nothing to do with this.
So Logan promptly went looking for Jubilee, but she was nowhere to be found. She wasn't in her cabin, but she had never set foot in there since the beginning of the journey anyway.
Next place to look for her was the gay bar where she liked to hang around, "Rectum". But the bar was on a ball-masque party that was raving that night, and Logan could only smell cross-dressing men in there, so he didn't bother walking in and be shooed for not coming in dressed as "Cleopatra", "Snow-White" or something equal to those, like everybody else did.
So his next logical stop was the main lounge, which had Dazzler singing for one-night-only. Someone had to be there, considering how Dazzler was an old friend and all. And he was right; Bobby and the jinxy Seaweed-head were there, their butts resting on the cushy chairs on one of the tables planted all over the lounge. Her accursed karate-bunny was also there, resting beside the chair's foot.
He tried to approach them, but he froze in his shoes as he saw the people filling up the two closest tables to Bobby's; the proud members of W.O.L.F. seemed to have recognised Iceman as "that guy that makes ice cubes and hangs around our adored Wolvie" so they had stayed close to him in case Wolverine himself showed up. Clever groupies, they were probably thinking much more clearly when their idol wasn't around.
As the head of the green-haired groupie (currently relaxed on her seat) began turning around like a satellite dish trying to spot Wolvish presence, Logan ducked under a table and almost made a waiter bump on him. The waiter avoided crashing onto Logan, but he couldn't also avoid losing the dishes he was carrying from his hands. The crashing noise turned all the attention in the room towards the poor waiter. Logan just looked at him pleadingly from under the table.
They exchanged glances for a moment...
...and the waiter finally looked away, pretending that he just slipped on something and lost his balance. Picking up whatever wasn't smashed into too little pieces to handle, the waiter got the hell out of there.
That whole fuss with the broken dishes averted the attention of the crowd to that, so nobody had the luck to notice a bunch of heavily armed men making their way around the lounge, positioning themselves in every single side of the room, eventually surrounding all of the passengers currently hanging around in the lounge.
Then the ship's Captain, looking rather impatient, came up the stage and ushered Dazzler out of it, whispering something about emergency issues to her. Dazzler got pissed off at having her singing interrupted in the middle of a song that was holy to her ("Put the blame on mame", that is) and muttered something about never singing on this fish-smelling wretch again.
The Captain quickly swallowed all of her nagging and as soon as she was off, he got back to the onstage mic and grabbed it.
"Oh, no, don't tell me he's going to sing again!" a frustrated Bobby said rather loudly, making the armed guys look at him with really mean eyes.
Maybe he deserved Evita after all, was what came to Logan's mind, still hiding under the table, waiting for the right moment to strike.
"Ladies and gentlemen..." the Captain began talking to the mic, "...or should I say: filthy muties, grudge of this planet! You really believed you could have your own, very special "mutie-only cruise"?
It was logical that the beginning of his speech resulted to some very agitated audience, most of them looking around in confusion, and finally in surprise when they noticed the strange men around them drawing their guns out. A loud collective muttering filled the lounge, making most voices undecipherable.
"Shut up. SHUT UP!!" The Captain screamed, making everyone stop talking and pay attention to his words instead. How could someone terrorise a crowd if he couldn't even demand their attention, after all?
"Okay. And now that I have your attention, I can explain to you what all this fuss is about. We are a new branch of The Friends of Humanity."
Most of the people in the audience gasped at the revelation. Bobby instead choked on his drink.
"What are the F.o.H. doing here?" he whispered to an equally dumbfounded Evita next to him. It's needless to say that most of the F.o.H. Captain's audience also resumed commenting on that revelation of his.
"Ahem." the fraud Captain coughed in the mic, causing everyone to shut up again. "You can now realise that the whole "mutant-cruise" thing was a trap for you and all of your fellow muties to come onto this ship and suffer a horrible death in the middle of the ocean. You see, the whole ship is loaded with explosives that will go off in much less than an hour. Thus, this will be the perfect example for all mutants to stop fighting for rights they don't deserve. It will also teach our fellow humans that they have to stand up to the enemy and refuse to give ground to the filthy muties. You will all be an example to the rest of the world today."
Everyone began panicking at the deadly predicament they were facing, but the Captain resumed talking before being interrupted again.
"The F.o.H. organised this set-up right after we bought the S.S.Lamancha, that up to now was a ship ready to go on retirement. You all fell for this. Even two poor mute girls mistook it for a "mute-only" cruise and set foot on this condemned boat. But we wouldn't allow two fellow humans to die with the rest of the mutant scum in here. So the girls are currently resting in our F.o.H. chopper, ready to disembark this death-trap. And excuse us, but the same goes for the members of F.o.H. that will soon escape this cruising bomb and leave you to blow up in pieces."
"What the hell...?" Logan thought from under his table. His claws itched to come out and play, but he felt like he should stay there and listen to some more.
Most of the audience began shrieking in panic as the Captain began snickering. You see, they might be mutants, but none of them was a fully trained mutant that could jump into fight anytime.
"I'm sorry, but the mutants in this room aren't going to die in the explosion."
The mutant audience began sighing in relief.
"You all know too much now that I relieved my urge to announce my whole plan to a portion of my victims. You have to die NOW." he said, nodding to the armed men surrounding the audience to start killing everyone. The mutant crowd began screaming in panic, Bobby began getting up from his seat, and Logan placed his palm in the underside of the table he was hiding under, ready to pop out and start slicing F.o.H. members up like a primitive mixer.
But they all stopped as another bunch of armed men, dressed in khakis this time, suddenly appeared and started knocking out the F.o.H. members. The mutants, still seated in their tables, began cheering for the new coming saviours, but soon shut their mouths as the men in khakis knocked out all of the F.o.H. members and then pointed their guns at the crowd, taking the place of the men they attacked.
Another man ascended the stage and stood next to a dumbfounded F.o.H. Captain. It was Jack! Next to him, two men in khakis carried Jubilee's. She was fine and awake, but she was tied like a salami with some ropes and was currently pissed as hell.
"Oh my god, JUBILEE!!" Logan yelled in surprise. An armed man in khakis that stood next to his table heard him and pointed his gun under the table. Logan silently walked out and stood next to the man, now being exposed. He wanted to wait and see what it all was about before he jumped into action.
"Oh, I see that Logan is here as well. I knew that keeping you as a hostage would prove useful" he said turning to Jubilee, who was muffled and couldn't curse at him in return. "I guess we can begin now." he said, and pushed the speechless Captain away from the mic, grabbing it and talking in a stand-up-comedy manner;
"You see our captain here? It seems that he intended to blow the S.S. Lamancha up, and as a good captain he wouldn't even go down with his ship! Well, there will be no blow-ups in the middle of the ocean. Even as we're talking, an especially designed cyborg is on the wheel and turning the ship back towards New York."
A stunned silence was the crowd's response. They had enough twists thrown in their faces up to now, so they were wise enough not to cheer or wail or even comment on his sayings.
"You see, me and the organisation I work for have seen through the evil plans of F.o.H. So we got in this ship disguised as mutants and prepared our own little plan, though still based in our beloved Captain's makings."
"Who's your boss?" Bobby yelled from his seat, provoking a shushing noise from Evita's side.
"My boss is named Osama Bin Laden, and I'm working for Al Qaeda. Happy now?"
The crowd forgot all about its manners and began screaming.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Jack screamed, pissed at the lack of spirit. "The ship IS going to blow up, but you guys don't have to be inside it when the time comes. We don't have any problem yet with mutants. Just with Americans."
"Why are we turning back? What ARE your purposes toward this boat?" Bobby asked again, causing Evita to slap the back of his head.
"You're an accountant, not a damned lawyer! Let the others make the questions." she whispered bossily. Bobby's reaction wasn't as sheepish as before, but he still swallowed it.
"Let me respond to that as well. The ship is full of explosives. Now imagine it being blown up in the middle of New York's port. Or even next to the Statue of Liberty. Now that would be an example for the world, not a stupid boat accident in the middle of nowhere." Jack said and a lunatic smile flashed on his face.
"Now that's what I call courage. Your dimwit of a boss isn't even on the ship, now, is he?" Bobby kept questioning him like a journalist that had found the news of the century. He even slapped Evita's hand away before it reached his head again.
"Oh, Osama IS on the boat. He was simply bored of these boring procedures and went on to party in some ball masque in a bar. He's not much of the guy that follows typical procedures. But he's still on this boat."
Right then, the Captain was out of his mind. He punched Jack right on the face, letting him collapse on the floor and came up to the mic. "You can't go messing my plans like this! Find your own ship, you damned Muslim!!! You can't just mess with us! WE ARE THE FRIENDS OF HUMANITY!!!!" he yelled, almost out of breath.
The crowd began screaming in panic.
Jack stood up and grabbed the mic. "I don't friggin care about your lame-ass plans! We don't give a damn about whose ship this is because it's going to fuckin blow up anyway! And if you're the friggin Friends of Humanity, then WE'RE THE FRIGGIN AL QAEDA!!" he screamed at his face, out of control.
The crowd screamed in greater panic than before.
"AND I'M THE FRIGGIN POLARIS!!! CAN NOW EVERYBODY SHUT UP?!?!?" Lorna screamed from the middle of the lounge, where she had landed. A large hole, which she had opened up in order to come inside, was now on the ceiling of the lounge. All the guns from the fallen F.o.H. members and the Al Qaeda guys in khakis were also lying next to her feet, drawn by her magnetic powers. She had finally found the cruising boat, after a whole day of flying above the ocean.
Now everyone began screaming in panic, much louder than before. Half of the audience stomped out from the lounge, and the ones that remained only stayed out of curiosity.
Logan and Bobby, from entirely different points, went "Uh oh..." at the same time.
"Now where is my Bobby..." she said, and her eyes fell on the table where her beloved Bobby sat, accompanied by a woman with hair almost as cool and green as hers.
Lorna walked towards them, lounge tables flying out of her way, as she was walking in a straight line that led to Bobby and the other woman. A cute bunny was also next to their feet.
"Bobby..." she said to him, instantly abandoning the "tough bitch" image and adopting a "caring lover" one.
"It's 'Robbie'", Evita corrected the unknown magnetic woman. Did she know Bobb...eer, Robbie? What did she want with him? She certainly seemed like a former girlfriend...and not the indifferent kind. Evita instantly realised the threat that the newcomer posed to her love affair with Robbie. She had better show some spirit if she didn't want to lose him over that hideous green-haired bitch.
"Bobby..." Lorna kept on, ignoring the bizarre corrections from the other woman, "...I...I know that I had been less than understanding those last weeks with you. But it was until the other day that I realised I loved you. At the wedding you said that you loved me, Bobby. You still do, right? Or did a simple crappy cruise change you so quickly?"
"It's ROBBIE! R-O-B-B-I-E!" Evita repeated. Although everyone could tell that the misnaming was the last thing that bothered her in Lorna's words.
"What's with that bitch anyway? Does she look after you new pet bunny or something? Or is she Jubilee's girlfriend?"
"M-mffff-mrrrrrgggghhhh!!!!" was all that a frustrated Jubilee could say through the duct tape covering her mouth, still tied up and in the arms of two huge Al Qaeda guys.
"I'm sorry, I always thought you were gay." Lorna said apologetically. She then turned her attention back to Bobby and the pet-care woman.
"So, what do you have to say?"
Bobby/Robbie just stood there, speechless. He had been Robbie those few days. He met a new love interest, hanged around with her and his friends (or just her, more likely) and found a new meaning in his always-do-gooding mess of a life. And now Lorna herself had came out of nowhere and was calling him with his old name, urging him back to his old life, which could worth something after all. So it had come to this. He had to choose -yet again. Would he give up everything and live a new life with Evita? Or this new life would be proven a mistake as soon as they got out of the happy cruise and got used to the rhythm of a normal life? What could be the best for him? Lorna or Evita? His life with the X-Men or a new one with his non-X-woman girlfriend? Or maybe...?
Yes. He had now made his choice.
Too bad that in all that big pause, Evita couldn't stand it and she answered for herself;
"That's my boyfriend over here, you crazy bitch! What right do you have to claim him from me?"
Lorna shot a look at Evita.
Evita shot it back at Lorna.
The whole room froze, focusing on the incoming catfight.
Jack, still onstage, helped the F.o.H. captain on his feet and they both watched with a wicked grin.
Logan raised an eyebrow and prayed that Lorna would take that bitch out of the way for him.
The W.O.L.F. members, still remaining in the room after realising that Wolvie was there, also looked at both green-haired psychos.
Jubilee, always in her salami imitation, silently hoped that Lorna would pay for calling her a lesbian.
Bobby decided to let it go. This situation could only help him confirm his choice.
The DJ responsible for the earlier show from Dazzler, made the strategic choice to play "Carmina Burana" on the speakers. The epic sound inwardly prepared everyone present for the equally epic incoming battle.
Lorna locked eyes with Evita, letting her know that she would be her next target.
Evita got up from her chair and they started walking in a circle, facing each other viciously.
"Bring it on, biatch." Evita spoke up, twirling a finger around her left skull earring.
"You had it coming, whore." Polaris responded with a snobbish grin.
Summoning her magnetic powers, Polaris made all the abandoned furniture in the lounge fly in circles around Evita and, eventually, straight toward her. But somehow, that lucky bitch avoided all of the incoming chairs and tables, without even moving around to dodge them.
One of the chairs hit Bobby lightly on the thigh. A table flew straight towards Logan, but he popped up his claws and sliced it up in milliseconds, causing his groupies to cheer in awe. Another one landed just inches from Jubilee's head, who had now been set on the floor by her guards.
"What?!?" Lorna mouthed in surprise. Not only she missed, but she hit nearly everyone else present but her actual target.
Evita just smirked.
Lorna summoned more chairs, even some guns that the F.o.H. thugs had on them earlier and magnetically threw them with force to her enemy.
All of them miserably missed, crashing on the wall behind the ever-smirking Evita.
Polaris, being frustrated more than ever in her life before (except maybe for the time that Alex dumped her at the altar, which caused her losing all these cool wedding gifts) summoned all of her power and unleashed a massive charge of magnetic force towards everywhere. The pure energy lashed roaring towards every direction possible, pretty much in a Dragonball style.
When everything calmed down, Polaris looked around to see what she had achieved.
Bobby was now thrown off his chair, sitting on the floor and rubbing his aching rear from the fall.
Logan's hair was sticking up more than ever before, having been immensely magnetised.
The two guards above jubilee had now been thrown back and had hit the wall, falling unconscious.
The ship's captain had probably been thrown out of the room, and the guy that stood beside his was still in front of the microphone, though ducking all this time.
Some group of girls were picking themselves from the floor on the other side of the room.
The bunny was still in the same place, having grabbed on the carpet with its huge claws all that time (CLAWS?).
But her opponent was still standing where she stood before, still smirking, not even a single green hair of hers touched.
"Aaaaargh!!! HOW ON EARTH DOES SHE DO THAT?????!?" Lorna yelled to nobody in particular in order to express her utter frustration.
Logan sneaked up next to her and tipped her shoulder.
"What now?" Lorna shot at him with ultra bitchiness.
Logan just gave her the hint she needed. "Her power's that way. She jinxes people around her, especially those who oppose her. You'll never get her by using your powers. Try the traditional way instead."
"Oh yeah? And what's that way?" Lorna asked.
Evita just looked at the two of them in confusion. Why would that growly friend of Robbie's coach that total bitch against his best pal's girlfriend?
"Your fists, of course." Logan said, completing his little coaching session with Lorna.
"I'm gonna kick your ass in the actual meaning of the word then, bitch." Lorna said, turning her attention to her enemy.
"C'mon. Make. My. Day." was the other woman's response, just as "Carmina Burana" was close to reaching its climax.
They lashed at each other and began cat-fighting...or bitch-fighting is more like it in that instance.
Everyone present who wasn't still dizzy from Polaris' magnetic attack focused at the ongoing fight. A cloud almost formed around the two contestants, green hair flashing around once in a while, growls and yelling and punching and crashing could be heard all the time from that direction.
Logan couldn't believe his eyes; never in his entire memorised life had two women fought for his eyes, yet Popsicle could from now on brag about that happening to him.
Bobby instead watched with mysterious shadows over his eyes, almost looking like he wasn't really interested in the outcome, but simply curious.
Jubilee felt lucky that her eyes hadn't been tied as well and she was granted to see that spectacle.
A couple of minutes later, both women withdrawed from the fight, seemingly tired. The marks on both of them betrayed very minor injuries, and nobody seemed to be winning up to then. And that was exactly what was happening. Evita's jinx factor never allowed Lorna to manage a good strike on her, but on the other hand Evita was way too inexperienced in close combat to aggressively pose a threat to Lorna's well-being.
So none of them had the upper hand. Evita could see that her usefulness in battle would prove fatal for her eventually. She had to do something before they resumed fighting.
Lorna leered at her opponent through short breaths. That lucky bitch would miraculously dodge all of her heavy-handed attacks. But she knew that if they kept going like that she wouldn't keep dodging her forever. A vein on her forehead began pulsing and she looked at Bobby's current girlfriend through burrowed, sweaty brows.
"I'll get you eventually, little whore. I'll get you..." she whispered to her general direction.
Evita knew that the other woman knew well what she was saying. She thought quickly, trying to hastily come up with an idea that would make her a winner.
Her eyes travelled over her ever-faithful pet. Fluffy was still sitting next to her chair, snorting all the time.
"That's it! I'll use my karate-bunny to kick that bitch's ass! As soon as her face will hit the floor, it won't matter if I used my pet to knock her out!" were the brilliant thoughts that nestled into her mind.
But the way she expressed her ideas wasn't equally brilliant.
"KARATE-BUNNY! GET THAT GREEN-HAIRED BITCH!!!" she screamed with a really nasty voice.
Everyone turned his attention to the invincible bunny now. Fluffy hid a bunny-smirk under his bunny-moustache, got up from the place he was sitting on and approached the battle scene.
Then the bunny promptly proceeded to kicking the ass of BOTH green haired-bitches!
"Ohmigod..." Jubilee thought to herself, since she couldn't speak up for it anyway. "Stupid ole Evita never clarified WHICH green-haired bitch her bunny should beat up...way to go, Smart-ass."
Now both Evita and Lorna laid unconscious on the lounge's floor. The bunny scooped its feet on their limp bodies and then made its glorious, dramatic exit.
Logan, surprised at the turn of events, looked at Bobby, who looked at the two women that loved (?) him, who in turn looked nowhere, since their eyes were closed and unconscious.
Logan approached Bobby and put a hand on his shoulder. "How do you feel about this Bob...eer, can I call you Bobby?"
"I'm not sure how I should feel. Look at those two," he said, nodding at the unconscious women, "they practically fought for me. I should feel flattered because of this, but, I don't know. How can somebody respect a woman who jumps in a catfight for a man's sake? Those two had no tact, no self-respect, not anything...I think I'll just-"
"AHEM! EXCUSE ME!" Jack screamed from his former position, beside the mic. "Now that those two bitches are out of the picture, can I proceed to taking the damned ship over and making the Americans pay for their crimes against Islam?"
Logan, Bobby, the W.O.L.F. members and some other mutants that had remained there all turned towards the wannabe-hijacker. They all yelled in unison: "NO!!!"
"NO? NOOO? WHY NOT? I'LL GET YOU FOR THAT! I WILL HAVE YOU KILLED, TIED ON THE BOAT'S GRATINGS AND BLOWN UP ALONG WITH THE REST OF THIS FREAKIN SHIP!"
"You and what army...?" Logan calmly said, pointing at Jack all the Al Qaeda men that had lost their weapons during Lorna's appearance and were later knocked out when Lorna unleashed her massive magnetic charge.
"Uhm...good point." Jack whispered, trying to find a solution to his minor problem. "A-ha!" he exclaimed, getting a small gun from his pocket. "Here" he said, as he shot Logan.
Now, Jack wasn't really a man of action. He was just a scientist, who happened to admire Osama Bin Laden and work for him. So the bullet barely missed Logan, only managing to shave the tip of his left sideburn.
Logan put his left hand on his sideburn, where there should be more hair at the time. He growled menacingly and leered at Jacks' direction.
His W.O.L.F. groupies however didn't have the same cool reaction. After gasping at the man's audacity to shoot Logan in the face, they collected themselves together and marched towards the stage, looking at Jack as if he was a little chicken that would provide their prey.
"Lynch the bastard!" Marie, the proud W.O.L.F. leader ordered the others, as she led the lynch mob towards Jack herself.
"Uh-Oh..." Jack thought, giving some rapid thinking to the situation, trying to find a way out. He eventually thought of something.
"I'm sorry it had to be this way...." he whispered to nobody in particular, as he reached for something into his large pocket. He picked out a magazine, he stroked its cover with regret while saying goodbye to it, and then proceeded to throw it in front of the lynch mob threatening his life.
The W.O.L.F pack leader looked at the magazine with curiosity... "What the hell? A Playgirl?"
Picking it up, she quickly raced through the magazine's pages and stopped in some certain ones. Her eyes grew really large, as she was rendered speechless from what she saw. She eventually looked at the very weel-known figure at the cover and gawked as well. She then turned to the other W.O.L.F. members and said with a shaky voice:
"Wo-wolvie...is...in this mag..."
Another groupie approached her, put her hand on the magazine, trying to take it from the leader and see what's inside. The leader resisted. She would never let that magazine go. So the other groupie had to look at tit while it still was in the other one's hands. And she did.
"OH MY GOD! THERE'S WOLVIE IN THIS MAGAZINE!!! AND HE'S NAKED!!!!" She screamed with a pitch voice, causing all the others to pay total attention to her.
Upon hearing these words, everyone lashed at those two and the Playgirl, wanting to get a grip on it and look at the heavenly pictures.
Soon, all of the groupies were fighting over the tortured Playgirl, slapping each other in the attempt to get the Playgirl for themselves. A big cloud began to form around them.
Jubilee, upon hearing what that Playgirl was about, ripped apart her restraints with an unusually superhuman strength and lashed into the big fighting cloud as well. "I'm sorry Wolvie" she apologised while still in mid-air.
Jack couldn't help but smile at his own brilliance. "See, Wolverine? This magazine was really important to me, but I had to sacrifice it in order to get the perfect distraction. Now I can easily achive what I want."
Wolverine was a bit overwhelmed at his naked form being sold for a distraction, but he still fought the urge to jump in the fighting cloud and rip the offending magazine apart. He had to face the imminent danger on this boat and that was more important. He still didn't answer to Jack though.
"See this little beeper here? It's no normal beeper you know. It controls the explosives downstairs. I can control if they're going to go off instantly, or if there's going to be a deadline before they go off. Now, everyone had better back off, or I'll make them blow up in a second and we're all going straight to hell. Capisce?"
Bobby and Logan nodded with a hypnotised expression. Everyone else was busy trying to get their hands on the Playgirl's issue from April 1973.
Jack looked at his beeper and gasped in surprise. "I don't get it...why are the explosives to go off in half an hour? There must have been some mistake..." he said and began hitting the buttons on the beeper, cursing and cussing all the time.
Bobby and Logan looked at Jack with dismay.
"I think I know what happened..." Bobby pointed out at a desperate Jack. "When Polaris set off her major magnetic charge, it must have somehow affected your beeper. I don't think you can do anything else with that beeper anymore."
"DAMN! This explosion must NOT be thrown in the wind! I must get this ship somewhere where it would pose a threat to more people's lives! I think the Canary Islands must be close enough to reach in half an hour!" he said and then went off to find his Seductress and change the boat's directions.
"Shit! This madman wants to kill as many people as possible to make his point! I'm going after him. Drake, get Jubilee out of this fight and help her evacuate the ship! You get me? Nobody must be on this boat in 28 minutes from now." Logan was put into 'leader mode' instantly.
"Understood. But, Logan...what about you?" Bobby voiced his concerns. Logan going all sacrificial was such a cliche.
"No worries. A petty explosion should be no match for my healing factor. Now get to work, boy!" he said, and then went after the Al Qaeda scientist.