Drei
Part 8
By Mieren
The mansion received a short hiatus as the multiplied blue mutants learned to move around again. Unable to even vaguely tell them apart, the occupants of the institute just started pointing when they called for one of the fuzzy elves. The Kurts, however, seemed to have no trouble whatsoever telling one another apart and appeared to be calling each other by number in German. So far, the one they called 'Sechs' seemed to be the ringleader for undetermined reasons.
During the break from their rampaging, Forge was desperately working in his lab, trying to figure out why the experiment was perpetually going awry. After going over the original schematics and various equations about a hundred times, he sheepishly reached out to his diagrams with a pencil and carried a one. After that, it only took a few minor alterations in the settings to correct the continuous problem. He told the others that the equipment ready to try again immediately. Before he could do anything, though, the herd of Wagners had to learn to teleport accurately again.
That particular problem was rather vexing in and of itself. The swarm of fuzzy blue elves couldn't even walk properly, let alone teleport. That, however, didn't stop them from eating every scrap of food in the mansion, albeit messily. Unless their movements were exactly synchronized, they tended to mirror each other's movements unintentionally. That led to a great deal of tripping, walking into walls and accidentally stuffing food up noses.
Ororo, quite reasonably, had suggested knocking eight of them out with tranquilizers and just sending one through the teleporting process to fix the problem immediately. Scott, having dyed his hair back to its original color, was in a rather foul mood since one of the blue fuzzballs had woken him up at four in the morning with an air horn. A bit frazzled from the rude awakening, he suggested shooting eight of them and being done with it. Needless to say, he sorely regretted making that suggestion. He only got a moment's warning before it happened.
"Scott, have you ever had surgery on your colon?" Kurt asked.
"No," Scott answered slowly.
"You're about to."
The next thing Scott knew, he was surrounded by blue. Within a few seconds, he found himself at the top of the flagpole in front of the institute, hanging by his boxers, consequently the only article of clothing he was still wearing. Jean, after laughing hysterically and taking several pictures, eventually levitated him down.
Logan came back during the third day of there being nine fuzzballs. He took one look at the clump of them hanging all over the common room, turned sharply on his heel and promptly left. No one had seen him since, though rumor had it that he had acquired at least four speeding tickets on his way out of Bayville.
The following day, Forge received a death threat in the mail that looked suspiciously like Logan's handwriting. The genius just added it to the enormous pile he had been getting from Tabby and Pietro about the various incidents involving the five year old Kurts. The Brotherhood hadn't yet figured out that there were nine of him yet and the occupants of the mansion were placing bets on when they would find out and what exactly it was that would be done to them by the blue menaces.
In the end, no one won the Brotherhood bet jackpot. One of the nine, suspected to be the infamous Sechs, laced the entire Boardinghouse with prolactin. (For those of you who aren't biology freaks like the mad author, it's a hormone that causes lactation. It's absorbed through the skin almost instantly. Will affect both genders. In men, it also causes impotence, buy hey, who's paying attention to that?) Toad was the one who told the X-Men what had happened in exchange for protection from further pranks. When the students honestly told him that they couldn't protect him from the blue menaces, he changed his offer to a bargain for food. Eager for an explanation, Scott and Jean took him to a buffet to get him to talk. The froggy teen seemed amused as he explained the results of that particular prank. The amphibian nature of his mutation rendered him immune to the hormone, but no one else in the Brotherhood was so lucky.
Tabby, though extremely annoyed, had the easiest time of the lot. She simply put some tissues down the front of her bra to absorb the mess. Blob was similarly lucky, his mass making it look like he was just sweating. Lance ended up locking himself in his room. Pietro just disappeared in a flash of silver and didn't return for almost a month, wanting to make absolutely sure that the Wagner threat was over before coming back.
Following the prolactin incident, Beast started hiding all of his chemicals and various equipment in addition to locking his lab. The last thing they needed was for the Kurts to discover the estrogen. He was certain that if the men of the mansion started growing breasts that everyone with blue fur would be summarily killed, himself included.
While locking away the chemicals, Hank did notice that he had not reached the chemicals quite in time. A large jar of potassium permanganate was missing. While the purple crystals were mostly harmless in small quantities, and even an effective antiseptic, it would stain skin a dark brown for a long time, eventually wearing off over the course of a few weeks. A large amount could be potentially dangerous. Beast sighed, knowing that Kurt knew enough chemistry to utilize the knowledge on that particular chemical. Knowing the mindset of the teleporting elves, he correctly assumed that someone was about to become a canvas.
The target of the blue brigade was none other than Toad. Irritated by the fact that he was immune to the prolactin stunt, he had devised a plan to torment Todd. His efforts resulted in Toad waking up to find his skin stained with threadlike deep brown lines from fine strokes of a concentrated permanganate solution. The overall effect was to make him appear like the film negative to a picture of a spider web. Or a tiger on crack. The hopping mutant discovered his new appearance when he woke up one morning and had gone into the bathroom to take a leak.
"Hey!" Toad exclaimed, stunned. Tabby and Blob had laughed at him for hours. Lance still wouldn't come out of his room, even to see the striped frog.
Because his comrades were laughing, Toad decided not to tell them what he had learned from the X-Men. That there were now nine Wagners running loose. He'd let them find out the hard way.
To Be Continued…
Had to get out a short section now that I've escaped the evils of the midterm. I'll post more soon on the herd of fuzzies.
And your biology lesson for the day…
Prolactin makes you lactate (produce milk out the boob region). And in men, there's another fun side effect that will be brought up later. Or rather, not brought up. (Impotence *cough-cough-snicker*)
Estrogen is responsible for female development in general. Will cause breast growth.
Potassium permanganate is a purple crystal that will turn your skin a dark brown color if you touch it. I learned this the hard way in organic chemistry lab. My hands and arms were spotted for weeks.
Frogs are not mammals, therefore they do not have mammary glands and do not produce milk.
For anyone that cares about any German I'm using. Counting to nine in German is as follows. Ein, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun. Just in case I get around to using that terminology. The evil ringleader, Sechs, is number Six, if anyone is still reading this. The number was chosen because it sounds like Zechs from Gundam Wing. ^_^