Disclaimer: I don't own Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Joey, Phoebe, or ANY of the League.
Feedback: I'd appreciate it.
La Fille de Belleville: Glad you like it so far; I hope I can continue to meet with your approval.
bb: That's the idea, so I'm glad to see it's working.
queerquail: This soon enough?
Krisian Rose: Things will get fun, or, at least, chaotic. Oh, just a couple of points; Skinner wasn't drooling on the table, just on his face, and Ugly Naked Guy moved out a couple of years ago.
Sean Molloy-1: I hope I didn't keep you waiting.
The One Where They Help Save the World
As Monica opened the door to her apartment, she noticed one thing instantly; the people they'd left there earlier were all awake now, or at least were waking up. The Indian in blue and the man with the scars on his face were still waking up, but the other four- the young man with curly hair, the woman, the half-naked guy, and the invisible (How that was possible Monica still didn't know) man- were all wide awake.
The four of them looked over at Monica as she walked into the apartment and shut the door, and she found herself wishing she hadn't run on ahead of the others to get back home. She would have stayed with the others, but she wanted to make sure that the… people hadn't done any damage.
On the plus side, it would appear that nothing was broken at the moment, although the… the invisible man… had a small line of what appeared to be drool running down the side of his face.
After a couple of seconds of quiet, during which Monica stared at all the people in her apartment while they all stared back at her, the invisible man broke the silence.
"Ah, good day to you, ma'am," he said, in what Monica thought was a cockney accent. He looked her in the eyes, and smiled. "Well, good to see average standards of beauty haven't dropped in the future," he said, grinning at her again in a manner that Monica guessed was meant to be charming.
Personally, she found it disturbing, but that was probably because of the man's pale face and invisibility.
The younger man groaned. "Skinner, could you possibly not try and hit on people while we're here?" he asked, sounding as though he'd had similar conversations with the invisible man (Apparently called Skinner, Monica noted privately). "Apart from anything else, if we're in the future, at the very least you could technically be old enough to be this woman's father." He looked back at Monica. "What year is this, anyway?" he asked, tilting his head to one side in a curious manner.
Monica blinked. Of all the questions she'd been expecting to answer, that hadn't been one of them. "Where are we?" Yep, definitely. "Who are you?" Pretty much what she would have expected to be the first question they asked. "What the hell happened to us?" She wouldn't have been able to answer, but she had been expecting it.
But, "What year is this?"
Very unexpected.
"Um… 2003?" she said, realising she still hadn't answered.
The entire group stared at her in astonishment for a few seconds, before the man with the scars got to his feet and broke the silence.
"Well… that was earlier than I expected," he said, looking around at the others. "It would appear we're dealing with a rouge group, in that case; time travel isn't known to the public at large at this point, so the machine must have been developed privately."
Before Monica could say anything about that rather confusing statement, the flat's door opened and her five friends walked in, Ross at the back carrying Emma.
"Mon, could you possibly not- oh, you're awake," Chandler said, realising that the mysterious group had regained consciousness while they were away.
For a while, the two groups just looked at each other, nobody quite sure what to say. Eventually, however, Rachel broke the silence by walking towards the young man with her hand outstretched.
"Hi," she said to the man, smiling brightly. "I'm Rachel Green, the girl you've already met is Monica Gellar-Bing, the blonde is Phoebe Buffay, the handsome guy's Joey Tribbiani, the geeky-looking one's Ross Gellar, Monica's brother, and the third one is Chandler Bing, her husband. You guys are?"
Sawyer smiled a little at the woman. He wouldn't say he was used to this kind of attitude from a woman- he would have expected it from Mina, but that was about it- but it didn't take him as by surprise as it would have done before he joined the League.
"I'm Tom Sawyer," he said shaking her hand before he turned around to indicate the others. "These are my friends, Mrs Wilhemina Harker, Captain Nemo, Mr Rodney Skinner, Professor Alexander Hartdegen, and Doctor Henry Jekyll."
He looked back at Rachel, and was surprised to see her looking at him with an expression of blank astonishment on her face. Looking up at her friends, he noticed- with some surprise- that they had similar expressions.
It reminded him of the expression on the faces of Quartermain, Nemo, Skinner and Gray after they'd witnessed Mina draining one of the Fantom's soldiers of all his blood. It was as though just hearing the names of the League was the most shocking experience they'd heard in all their lives.
"What?" he asked Rachel, curiously. "Did my name go out of fashion or something over the last hundred years?"
Rachel blinked, apparently bought back down to Earth by his tone of voice.
"You… you're called Tom Sawyer?" she asked, sounding like she couldn't quite believe it.
"Um… yeah?" Sawyer replied. He was feeling a little confused right now; what did his name have to do with anything?
"OK, so your name's Tom Sawyer, and you're hanging around with a bunch of people named after the Dracula heroine, a doctor who turns into pure evil, the commander of a huge submarine, a guy who travelled through time, and… I dunno who the invisible dude's named after!" Chandler said, walked towards the young man. "What, your parents were all fans of Victorian literature or something?"
The man blinked. "Pardon… Chandler, right?" he asked. Chandler nodded, and the man continued speaking. "I think something's going on here that nobody's quite clear about. How do you know our names, for one thing?"
The scarred man coughed a little. "Ah, I can fill that one in," he said, as the rest of the people in the room turned to face him. "Do you remember those books mina gave you for Christmas, Tom?" he said to the blond man. 'Tom' nodded, and the man went on. "Well, those books are still being published in this era, but over time, people have come to assume they're fictional. You remember, I mentioned the fact when I first joined the League?"
"Oh yeah…." Tom said, before looking over at Chandler again. "Well, there's your answer, Chandler. Our parents weren't fans of 'Victorian literature', as you call us- we're the original characters."
"Oh," Chandler said, blinking a little at that statement. He looked back at his friends, and saw that at least they were as confused as he was. After all, what do you say to bunch of guys you never thought were real?
Ross coughed a little to attract attention. "Um, could I possibly put Emma down before we start to talk about this?" he asked.
"Emma?" Skinner asked, looking over at the palaeontologist with a curious expression.
"Emma?" Hartdegen asked, looking slightly startled at that statement.
"Who's Emma?" Mina asked.
"Oh… our daughter," Rachel said, deciding to take a chance and trust these people. After all, she'd read or heard of all the books these people featured in, and she knew for a fact that Tom, Mina, Alex, and Henry were decent enough people. Nemo and Skinner she wasn't sure about- hadn't Nemo attacked several ships and the Invisible Man committed murder?- but, given that Nemo had been civil enough in person and Skinner wasn't the original invisible man, she felt fairly safe.
Just then, a thought occurred to her, and she looked over at Alex. "What's the big deal with the name 'Emma'?" she asked him.
Alex blinked. "What?" he asked. "Why should there be a big deal with the name Emma?"
"You reacted like there was," Phoebe put in. "Plus, you don't need to be psychic to see that there's something about that name that gets to you."
Sawyer coughed politely, drawing all eyes in his direction at once.
"Not that I'm against our groups getting to know each other, but we have a crisis to deal with at the moment?" he said, looking over at his fellow League members. He turned to face the others. "Look, we'll be perfectly prepared to answer your questions, but right now, I need to ask you guys one of my own."
"Which is?" Joey asked.
"In a nutshell, we have a serious problem going on at the moment, involving someone having tried to kill us back in our home time, and we're pretty much stuck here unless out friends at the other end can work out some way to get here, or unless we take out the guys who're trying to kill us," Sawyer explained. He looked over at the odd little gathering in front of him, took a deep breath, and then got right to the point. "Net result; we're stuck in your time until we can get back, and we need some assistance if we're going to make it. Will you help us?"
The six friends looked at each other, each one trying to work out an answer to give to this strange collection of people. Finally, Monica shrugged and looked back at the people from the past.
"Why not?" she asked. "I mean, if you're bonkers, we've got nothing major going on, and if you're telling the truth… might be fun."
Sawyer smiled. "Thanks," he told Monica. Then he became more professional. "Now, let's get down to business."