A/N
Three updates in one day! I've never been so proud of myself.
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"Is it dead?"
"I don't know."
"Julian?"
"It isn't. It's still breathing and saying weird stuff."
"What kinda weird stuff?"
"He…he…I can't put it into words, it's hard to translate." Julian twitched his nose. The big squirrel was lying flat out in front of the three of them. It must have knocked itself out a couple minutes earlier. They had ventured out of the house when the loud noises had stopped.
Julian ventured forward and picked the squirrel up. It mumbled something incoherently and twitched. "Let's take it inside and give it a drink, he looks thirsty."
"Absolutely not." Arcane's voice broke in, scaring all three of them. "If you want to give the squirrel a drink, take it down to the river.
"It smells like a skunk over there!" Jamie whined. Arcane looked nonplussed.
"So take it somewhere else. I don't really care where you take the animal, just don't take it inside the cabin." He walked off.
Julian twitched his nose again, this time in exasperation. It wasn't as if he couldn't calm the squirrel down…well, he might not be able to, and that may be a bad thing. The squirrel really wasn't all there, and it would be bad if he started freaking out indoors.
Would keep them occupied for a few hours though. But as it was, he was still kind of worried about the person who was watching them and Arcane, they might not take it as lightly as he and the other boys would.
That would be a bad thing too.
"Let's go down to the river, there must be someplace it doesn't smell like a skunk."
"I hope so, my nose can't take much of that, Ja?"
"Think Mr. Wings will let us?"
"Of course he will. Besides I'm vith you. What could go wrong?" Kurt asked.
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What indeed?
Kurt stumbled through the weeds to get to a bogged down part of the river. It was the only place that didn't smell like a skunk. Unfortunately, it smelt a lot like something else that he didn't care to name.
"Hurry up Kurt, get us some water!"
"Just a minute, you think this is so easy, you do it!"
"No way! It stinks!" Jamie yelled back, grinning. Kurt vowed never to allow those two monsters to coerce him into stuff like this again, even if he had the need to get away from grown up supervision.
He cupped a little water into his hands and teleported back to the two younger mutants. Julian held the squirrel so that it could taste the water. It immediately started drinking. When it was finished, Julian put the squirrel down. Kurt felt a wave of gladness when the squirrel acted like a real, normal squirrel, twitching it's cute little nose and sitting up on its haunches.
This lasted for about a minute.
"Take cover!" The small brown juggernaut began pinging off of trees, barely touching the bark.
"What kind of drug is that squirrel on?" He yelped as it went sailing over his head. There was a mushy sounding thump, and he turned to see the squirrel scrambling out of a dead tree before it shot off into the forest.
"What was that?" Jamie asked as he dusted of his shorts. "That squirrel is totally insane."
"Uh…guys? Do you hear that buzzing sound?" Julian picked up his ears. Now that he mentioned it, he could hear buzzing too, which soundly awfully familiar to…
"BEES!"
They came swarming out of the dead tree, intent on destruction.
"Run for it!"
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Arcane flipped through his newspaper with little to no interest. The same old news dotted every page. Anti-mutant and pro-mutant rallies. Murder of a famous official. A famous couple had a baby, another famous couple broke up. A billionaire's getaway for a vacation, with absolutely no true details in the entire story.
He briefly wondered how Warren felt knowing he was on some sandy beach cruise miles away from work with a beautiful woman on each arm.
The three large dogs were sitting in the room with him, each eyeing him out of the corner of their eyes. It was almost a test of will, to see if he would lose his cool.
He glanced down the obituaries to see of anyone he knew was there. There were none today.
"AHHH! AHHH! AHHH!"
Of course, tomorrow may be an entirely different matter.
He folded his newspaper with practiced ease and took it and his coffee with him as he walked over to the door. The three kids would be bursting through it at anytime.
"What's going on!?" Warren burst out of nowhere. Arcane half thought he'd left, but apparently his sense of duty was greater than his urge to run as far away from the death trap as possible.
"Nothing that won't be discovered once I open the door." He opened the door, and all three kids shoved him aside as they barreled their way in.
Leaving him almost face to face with an entire swarm of bees. He slammed the door shut fast. Bees bounced off the outside of the door. He quickly locked it.
"OUCH!" Julian's anguished cry broke the small silence that they had.
He turned to see Julian holding his tail. The boy's eyes were brimming with tears.
"They're coming up through the floor!" Kurt's panicked voice called out. Indeed, there were several large bees crawling up through a crack in the floor.
"I never had any of these problems until after I met all of you." He grumbled as he began stepping on bees. A few of them took flight and Jamie and Kurt took off to another part of the house. Warren took off his shoe and began to deal with the insects with a little more than needed vigor.
A nasty pain under his coat caused him to swat his arm hard, killing the insect that had strayed up his coat. Warren seemed to have the insects well under control, so he decided to move to another part of the house. As an afterthought, he came back and pulled Julian off with him.
Warren was having a little too much of a personal score to settle.
"You okay, kid?"
"My tail really hurts."
"Just a sec." He walked into the kitchen with Julian in tow, put his coffee and newspaper on the table, and began opening and shutting cupboards, until he found what he was looking for. He placed the baking soda on the counter and pulled out a very old bowl, barely held together. While Warren was still engaging in his personal war, Arcane heated up a little water and mixed the baking soda with it.
"Rub some of that on your tail, it'll make the swelling go down." He left the bowl in front of the boy and took off his coat and threw it over a chair. On his arm was a very nasty red spot, and the very dead insect. He flicked the insect off and helped himself to a little of the salve.
"Wow, Mr. Wings doesn't really like bees, does he?"
"I'm not entirely sure the bees are the problem." He commented dryly as the swarm was given its full beating.
"Then what is the problem?"
"You kids are the problem." He said, a little annoyed.
"Why are we a problem?"
He stared at the boy for a moment. A second later, it dawned on the boy, and his ears drooped.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about it." He said after a moment. "Some people are just accident prone."
"I got you, you little winged monstrosity!"
"And some people are just walking advertisements for stress management." Arcane commented as he glanced over in Warren's general direction. Picking up his discarded newspaper, he opened it again to obituaries. He reached for his coffee and was about to take a sip from it when he noticed the small winged creature in it.
"Damn."
"What?" Julian asked.
"There's a bee in my coffee."
"Uh…protein?"
"I'm not that deficient." He walked over to the sink and poured the cup out. When the bee attempted to rise into the air, he smacked it with the newspaper.
"Good riddance. Damn. Now I have to get a new newspaper." He tossed the paper into the trash and sat back down.
"Warren is taking care of the bees for us!" Jamie commented cheerfully as he walked in. "And Kurt and I didn't get stung!"
Kurt walked in soon afterwards looking nervously behind him. "I don't like bees."
"Die you little—Ouch! It stung me!"
"Apparently Warren doesn't care for them much either." Arcane commented smugly.
"Maybe you should make up more of this baking soda stuff…"
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Perhaps they should indeed…
Anon(girl): Well, I hope you like this chapter as much as the other ones, and unfortunately I don't have a number for MIB, but I have this nifty shield you can borrow, it stops most flying objects.
Asteria: I don't know, I heard skunk smell clings to fur pretty bad. I'm glad you liked the squirrel bit!
Chaotic Dreamer: Glad you liked it!
Chrissy: Kally thanks you. Heh, that is a pretty funny mental picture. Hope you like this chapter1
Aicha: You weren't offending. But sometimes I can't tell if people are being offending, so I try to keep the idea that I shouldn't be offended by anything. Anyway, I'm glad you thought it was so funny. I hope you liked this chapter too!
Arin Ross: That question may never be answered, though I wonder myself. I'm glad you liked that chapter so much, hope you like this chapter too!
Kally will take the reviews yet again! Watch out, there still may be bees around…