Just Another Day In Paradise
Jean-Paul Beaubier at behind his desk at the Xavier Institute, drinking his second cup of coffee of the afternoon and poring over some economics test papers, with a perhaps overly-critical eye. He took off his reading glasses, set them down on the desk beside the small snow-globe he'd brought from his home in Montreal, which depicted a wintry city scene complete with tiny, intricately detailed people, and rubbed at his eyes tiredly. He hadn't expected teaching unruly mutant teenagers to be such an exhausting experience – especially since he hadn't really grown out of being equally objectionable himself (or so his sister would have told him, anyway. Jeanne-Marie was helpful like that), but their constant background white noise of insipid celebrity gossip, vapid schoolyard politics, and general childishness often got to him more than he cared to admit. More than once he'd been tempted to shriek an obscenity-laced command to simply shut up at the entire class, but he had (much to his all-too-obvious relief) managed to bite it back, instead just handing out a few hours of detention to the troublemakers.
He smiled involuntarily. Oh, now that was satisfying. He freely admitted that he enjoyed seeing the dismay scoring itself indelibly into their faces as he told them just how many hours they would be spending in the company of Scott Summers in the east wing's detention room, learning about how much maintenance the X-Men's Blackbird needed. As excellent a team leader as Cyclops was, he did have a tendency to drone on about subjects he alone found interesting – and that, Jean-Paul reflected, was the perfect incentive for the troublemakers to behave themselves while he explained economics and business theory.
Jean-Paul picked up his pen again, and was just about to resume marking his pupils' work when the X-Men comm. badge in his jacket's inside pocket began to bleep insistently. Reaching in and retrieving it, he pressed the stud on its side that would let the person on the other end know that he had been paying attention to it. "Hello?" he said, trying not to let his irritation at being disturbed show through in his voice.
"Hi, JP," Hank McCoy said jauntily on the other end of the line. "Could I ask you a favour?"
Northstar rolled his eyes. "That depends on what the favour is. I happen to have a date tonight, and I don't want anything to interfere with that, do you understand?"
"Don't worry, Jean-Paul, I highly doubt that this will take that long," Henry replied, and Jean-Paul could just see his leonine face splitting into a juvenile grin as he did so. "All I'm asking is that you go into Westchester and get me some emergency supplies of Twinkies. I'm running low down here in the lab, and I have a chemistry class in five minutes, so –"
"Let me get this straight," Jean-Paul said, struggling to keep his contempt out of his voice, "you want me to do a little… shopping trip for you?"
"That… is what I was saying, yes," Henry said, a little sheepishly. "I can ask somebody else if you wish –"
"No, no, I'll do it, Henry," Jean-Paul said wearily, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips and knowing that he would probably regret doing this later, "but I expect a few favours in return, or I will keep those Twinkies for myself."
"Excellent!" Henry laughed. "Name your favour, Mr Beaubier, and it shall be yours. I –"
Jean-Paul clicked the comm. badge off without another word. Doing favours for Henry McCoy was one thing, he thought – but listening to his inflated syntax was quite another…
Jean-Paul walked through the local Wal-Mart and wondered again why he'd agreed to do this. The basket on his arm felt ludicrously heavy and the shelves seemingly held every kind of unhealthy junk food – except Twinkies. He considered asking an attendant for some help when he happened to look out of the window and saw a white-coated masked man brandishing what looked like two automatic pistols. Behind him was hovering what Jean-Paul could only describe as a flying saucer. Rifling through his mental Rolodex, Jean-Paul managed to recall that this was the international terrorist and Weapon Plus graduate Fantomex – although what Fantomex was doing in Westchester, he didn't know. Perhaps he was planning on finding the Xavier Institute and asking for asylum, as he'd tried with Professor X and Jean Grey a few months previously.
Still, that was pretty much irrelevant right now. Jean-Paul knew that getting this man away from the immediate populated area was the best idea, so, dropping the metal basket and flying out of the store's front doors, he grabbed Fantomex under the arms and rose about five hundred feet, looking for a suitably bare area where he could try and get some information out of this masked man. Fantomex squirmed and thrashed in his grasp, reeling off curse after curse in a bad French accent, as the flying saucer flew almost anxiously along behind them.
Finally, when Jean-Paul felt he was far enough away from the general population to let the other man go, he dropped him from about twenty metres up, confident that he would survive such a relatively insignificant fall. However, instead of falling right to the ground, the flying saucer intercepted him and deposited him gently on the ground itself.
Hmm. Not what I'd expected at all, Jean-Paul thought, annoyed. Still, he didn't want to let Fantomex know that. Alighting a few metres away from the masked man, he stood with his arms folded and one eyebrow slightly cocked.
"Good afternoon," he said conversationally. "Would you mind telling me what you were doing waving those pistols around and generally scaring the living daylights out of the Westchester folk?" His face twisted into a smirk. "And before you answer, mon ami, I'd drop the fake French accent – it's not even slightly convincing, and it makes you sound like an idiot for trying."
Jean-Paul watched the masked man consider the point for a moment or two, his shifty eyes telling him a lot about what the man was thinking. He'd seen that look often enough when he'd been ferrying bombs around for the Quebec separatists he'd allied himself with before joining Alpha Flight – enough to know that this man was not to be trusted in the slightest.
That, and Jean-Paul already thought he was a waste of space for even attempting that pretentious fake accent. Frankly, he'd wanted to shove that stupid mask down the man's throat ever since he'd first opened his mouth. He found himself struggling to find reasons why Jean hadn't done the same when she'd met this poseur, and then supposed that either Jean liked mysterious men, or she wasn't as smart as he gave her credit for.
He hoped it was the former. He liked Jean, despite his best efforts not to, and he didn't want to think she was stupid enough to fall for the tricks of such a transparent jester of a man.
Fantomex folded his arms, mirroring Jean-Paul's posture, and then said, in a gratifyingly non-accented tone, "I was on my way to your Institute because I wish to be granted asylum. The authorities in Europe still find my presence to be rather… offensive, and will not countenance my staying there, even in one of the X-Corporation's local facilities."
"From what I've heard about you, Mr Fantomex, that doesn't particularly surprise me," Jean-Paul replied flatly. "And just why would we want to harbour somebody like yourself? Apparently you seem quite unwilling to divulge any information unless you're being paid ludicrous amounts of money. Why would we want to put up with that?" He spread his hands briefly to either side of his body when Fantomex displayed another flash of surprise. He liked this game – there was great satisfaction to be had out of rocking this idiotic collection of clichés back on his heels. "Yes, I heard about you and Jean's little altercation in Europe. If you're so keen to make money at every turn, Mr Fantomex, I suggest you take that GI Joe mask off and go find a job on Wall Street. I hear there are just as many opportunities for cut-throats there as there are in mercenary work."
"Perhaps so," Fantomex agreed, "but I like the way this coat fits. And EVA wouldn't fit well on the trading floor, I imagine." He paused, and Jean-Paul noticed his hand creeping towards the holster on his right hip. "Oh well," he continued, swinging his pistol up and spraying a volley of screaming bullets in a wide arc. "It looks like I might have to go through you after all –"
But by then Jean-Paul wasn't there any more. Instead, while Fantomex had been speaking, he had used his enhanced speed to flank him and grasp the top of the other man's mask, wrapping an arm around his throat and jerking his mouth close to where he guessed Fantomex's ear was. "Don't," he hissed, "do that again." In an instant he had slapped the gun out of Fantomex's hand, where it clattered noisily onto the ground, and had applied a standard, uncomfortable choke hold in order to get the masked man to behave himself. "I don't take very kindly to being shot at."
"Good," Fantomex grunted, before dropping to one knee and driving the top of his skull into Jean-Paul's jaw with a considerable degree of force. Jean-Paul's vision filled with blinding white stars for a second or two, and he felt himself letting go of Fantomex despite himself. "Is that better?" As he knelt on hands and knees, trying to get some sense of exactly where he was, Jean-Paul felt the muzzle of Fantomex's other pistol touch the back of his skull, and heard the soft click of a bullet being chambered. Time to improvise, he thought blurrily, and swung his left leg out in a scything arc. Luckily for him, it hit Fantomex's calf squarely in the centre of the muscle and knocked the other man's aim just off-kilter enough to make the bullet thud into the dirt a few paces away. Deciding that pressing whatever brief advantage he had was a good idea, Jean-Paul reached out with a flailing hand and grasped Fantomex's left calf, flipping him onto his back. Shocked, Fantomex flailed for a moment like a woodlouse trying to right itself until Jean-Paul leapt over to where he was lying and delivered a vicious right cross to the base of his masked jaw. Fantomex looked shocked for all of the three seconds of consciousness he managed to hold onto before he slumped into oblivion. Standing up and wiping the dust off his trousers, Jean-Paul spat a contemptuous gobbet of bloody spittle onto the ground alongside Fantomex's crumpled, motionless body.
"Next time, mon ami, try calling ahead first," he said, catching his breath as much as he could, before turning his gaze up towards the hovering saucer craft and extending a finger towards it. "And you – do you do anything else except float there?"
I am EVA it said in a biomechanical, fluid tone that despite its metallic edges seemed to have a touch of music to it. Fantomex and I share an intimate connection. I cannot leave him.
"Very well," Northstar growled, an annoyed frown carving itself into his brow. "If you wish to follow me, keep up." He knelt down and heaved the unconscious form of Fantomex up onto his shoulder. Sourly, he realised that he still hadn't found those infernal Twinkies for Beast yet. All in all, he decided, this wasn't turning out to be a very good day…
As he looked at the man standing in the front porch of the Xavier Institute, Jean-Paul had to concede that his earlier assessment of the day was looking really rather inaccurate. Standing at least six feet tall, with finely-sculpted muscles that curved in all the right places, and with a meticulously-crafted black goatee that clung closely to his olive-skinned face, Steven Francis seemed to be a perfect way to alleviate the stress of the previous few hours. He was dressed in a scarlet shirt that clung to his wiry frame in such a way as to advertise the fact that its owner took great care of himself, and a pair of black jeans that were expensive enough to seem classy without being too obviously opulent. Jean-Paul tucked his white shirt into the waistband of his plain black trousers and walked down the stairs of the Xavier Institute's front hall in order to greet his date for the evening. For a moment he hesitated, still feeling a little awkward about showing any affection publicly, but then he remembered that the Xavier Institute was practically built on foundations of diversity and tolerance, so it really wouldn't be too out of the ordinary. Keeping that in mind, he stepped close to the other man and kissed him gently on the lips, slipping first one, then the other hand into those of his date, gripping them tightly as relief flooded into his tired body.
When the kiss broke, Steven exhaled deeply. "Hello yourself," he said, drawing a hand briefly down Jean-Paul's face. "So how was your day?"
"Dreadful," Jean-Paul said flatly. "I had to remark about a hundred test papers, McCoy made me fetch him some finger food, and as if that wasn't enough, I ran into the world's worst terrorist while shopping for Twinkies – and then I had to bring him back here." He rubbed the spot on the bottom of his jaw where Fantomex's skull had slammed into it, feeling a little twinge of pain as he did so. "I think he put my jaw out." He swore in French, and then took a deep breath. "But that's just par for the course when you're an X-Man, I suppose."
"So I hear," Steven replied, looking contemplative. "I'm afraid I didn't have nearly as interesting a day as you. Working a desk job for the NYPD doesn't involve getting punched in the face or hanging around with big blue animal-men." He smiled. "Well, at least not this far from Chelsea." He dangled the keys of his Volkswagen from his left hand. "So shall we go? I reserved the table for eight o'clock. Don't want to be late, do you?"
Jean-Paul felt an insistent smile tugging at his lips – his first genuine smile of the day, he realised. "I think," he began, "that that would be a very good idea indeed…"