Disclaimer: "With a ha! And a hya! And I'd kick her, sir."
(An: Yeah, I've been working a lot on this fic, I know, but unlike most of my parodies I've been planning this one for ages. So it's quite satisfying. And yes, that list IS from Norse legend.)
"D'accord, 'Ro, y' can get up now," Remy says, nudging Ororo with a foot.
FIVE MINUTES LATER...
"I t'ink we have a problem," Remy announces to nobody in particular.
"Ya think?" Rogue agrees. "No, seriously, you do?"
Remy is Not Amused. "FORGE!" he yells, deciding not to press the subject.
"I'm right here," Forge says, sticking up a hand. "I've been here the whole time."
"Oh. Right. So why isn't 'Ro wakin' up?"
"...Well... the stuff was supposed to keep her asleep until sunrise..."
"Oh, no, I am not waitin' dat long," Remy responds.
"What're we gonna do, then?" Kurt asks.
Remy gets a nasty smirk. "Cover for me, kay?" He zips out.
Kurt rubs his hands together and cackles evilly. "ABSOLUTE POWER!" He lets off an evil laugh worthy of Pyro.
"Actually, I thought it was rather off form," Pyro comments.
Wanda kicks him and he shuts up.
FIVE MORE MINUTES LATER...
Remy returns, holding a big bucket. He walks up to Ororo, and with great dignity and a sense of ceremony, upends it over her head.
Ororo does a horsey-type-shriek and jumps up, landing rather clumsily. "Ahem," she mumbles, clearing her throat.
"Ugh, wet horse," Kurt mutters, waving the air in front of his nose.
Ororo gives him a death glare.
"Somebody turn on the wind machine!" Remy yells.
"Oh, not again," Ororo mumbles.
AND YET ANOTHER FIVE MINUTE INCREMENT OF TIME LATER...
Ororo is completely dry, completely awake, and completely P.O.'ed about being crammed into an itty-bitty cage. "This is racism," she mutters. "Everybody's a racist."
So, anyway, we see the banner for Dani's carnival again, and then we hear Jason narrating. "This here is the Manticore," he explains, to a bunch of Random-I-Don't-Really-Have-A-Point-Except-To-Make-This-Look-Even-More-Like-The-Hobbit-Extras. "Man's head, lion's body, tail of a scorpion, I don't really like talking in these stilted sentences 'cause it makes me sound stupid." (1)
"And that's different... how?" Remy asks, looking up from his poker game.
Jason is (you guessed it) Not Amused. "Creatures of night... brought to light!" A big hairy paw reaches out of the cage and nearly skewers Jason. "You're, uh, going a bit far with the special effects there, again," he whimpers, backing up.
"I don't really care about you," Forge replies. "You're even more of a bit character than I was!"
Jason, finding no good response, hobbles over to the next cage. "Here is a dragon, breathes fire now and then." Ian leans forward and starts poking it. "Mostly at people who poke it, little boy!"
Ian, incensed by this, promptly sets Jason's hair on fire. "GAH!" Ian looks smug. Jason looks desperately in need of that big bucket of water Remy had earlier... AHEM.
"All right, all right," Remy mutters, getting up. He brings out the giant water bucket again and dumps it over Jason again. "What're we supposed to do about the wet monkey smell, though?" he asks.
Jason shoots him a death glare. "Its inside is an inferno," he goes on, "but its skin is so cold, it burns!" Clever watchers will note that his eye (the eyepatchless one) flares red... like a certain, muppet-on-crack-like version of Gollum we all (read me and like three other people) know and love. "It speaks seventeen languages badly, and is subject to gout. Creatures of night... brought to light!"
While Jason is rambling on about stuff we don't really care about, Kurt sneaks over by Ororo's cage.
"The satyr," Jason announces in the background. "Ladies, keep back!"
"Hey, you know, he looks kind of like Pietro," Wanda comments.
Author: -evil smirk-
"I shouldn't be here," Kurt whispers to Ororo, "but quickly... tell me what you see. Don't be afraid; the monkey smell will fade."
"AUGH!"
Kurt continues, undaunted. "Look at your fellow legends and tell me what you see."
Ororo glances first at the "manticore," and announces, "What he calls a manticore looks to be no more than a shabby toothless lion." It changes into such. Then she glances over at the cage of the "satyr." "And she has them believing that Pietro is a satyr... it's not that much of a stretch."
"I can't believe I agreed to this job!" Pietro yells, and shakes the bars.
Wanda falls over, laughing helplessly.
Pietro is Not Amused.
"Illusions! Deceptions! Mirages!" Ororo cries, annoyed. "Your Dani Fortuna cannot truly change things."
"That's true," Kurt agrees, "she can only disguise. And only for those eager to believe whatever comes easiest."
"Like Pietro," Wanda whispers to John, "eager to believe the author actually likes him just because he gets big parts in her parodies a lot."
"Urge... to kill... rising..." Pietro growls.
Wanda looks slightly bored. "I'm certain."
Pietro does a pretty good imitation of a satyr growling.
"The Midgard Serpent," Jason announces, pointing at a neverending snake coiling and uncoiling. "He's got the whole world in his coils... wasn't that rather redundant?"
Author: INSOLENCE!
Jason wisely shuts up.
"No, she can't turn cream into butter," Kurt says, "but she can make a lion look like a manticore to eyes that want to see a manticore." We see that the giant snake is really a rather tame viper. "Just as she put a false horn on a real unicorn to make them see the unicorn." The fake, blue-smoke-horn on Ororo's head shimmers. "I know you. If I were blind, I would know what you are."
"This IS a Storge, right?" Forge demands.
Author: -raised eyebrow-
"Just checking, you never know... you have a tendency for weird pairings..." (2)
"Who are you?" Ororo asks.
"I am called Kurt the Magician," Kurt explains, with a little bow. "Ah... you won't have heard of me. That's because my stage name was der Fliegen-Teufel!" (3)
"In the Munich circus, yes, WE KNOW," Kitty says, inspecting her nails. (4)
Kurt mutters something under his breath but shuts up about the circus anyway. "I entertain the sightseers as they gather for the show. It's not much of a job for a real magician, but, ah, I've had worse."
From the cage next to Ororo's we hear a screech and some nasty, ominous music starts up. We see Mystique, butt-ugly in her harpy form.
"That one is real," Ororo gasps, backing up. "And uuugly!"
Author: And you wouldn't think that the bare breasted-ness would be conducive to a PG-rated film... huh.
Mystique mutters something about just how high Ororo is on her list of people to kill.
"That is the harpy, Mystique," Ororo continues. "Yep, that's a pretty good description... manstealer."
Mystique flaps and screeches some more.
"Yes," Kurt agrees. "The old woman caught her by chance, just as she took you, asleep. Oh, she should never have meddled with a real harpy... or a black unicorn for that matter."
"Damn straight," Ororo mutters.
"Because the truth melts her magic, always," Kurt adds, looking a little P.O.'ed at being interrupted. "She's gonna free herself very soon now and she must not catch you still caged."
Then, of course, Jason (showing off Mystique) spots him, and yells, "Go on, get away from there! You know what she told you!"
"Don't be afraid, Kurt is with you," Kurt whisper. "Do nothing till you hear from me."
And with that he scoots off past the cage of the manticore.
"The unicorn," Jason announces, pointing at 'Ro. Everyone in the crowd is amazed and crap. Ooh. Touching moment... NOT!
So there's a QSC and it's night... damn, time flies when you're on a medieval clock!
We see Mystique, kindasorta sleeping.
"I don't care," Jason says, "how many damn spells you got on her. Get rid of that harpy! She thinks about it all the time, what she's going to do to us! Get rid of her, Dani!"
Dani (still in the hat, but Mystique!Raven is of course gone) glares at him. "Fool, be still! No other witch in the world holds a harpy captive, and none ever will! I choose to keep her! I can turn her into wind if she escapes, or snow, or into seven notes of music!"
"Ok, if you can do all that, why can't you make proper creatures?" Jason asks.
Dani is Not Amused.
Mystique flaps her wings and screeches some more, only this time it's apparently a bigger deal as the ominous music starts up again and the bars on her cage start to glow... y'know, ominously.
"She is breaking loose!" Jason cries. "She's gonna eat me!"
Dani subtly kicks him. "No, not yet," she mutters, holding out her arms. She waves her hands and smokey stuff comes from them. "Not yet. You're mine. If you kill me, you're still mine."
Apparently, the smokey stuff works, because Mystique calms down and the bars stop glowing.
Dani cackles. She turns to Ororo's cage. "And you seemed like such a nice newby," Ororo laments.
Dani rolls her eyes. "The harpy's as real as you are... so that means she isn't?"
The rest of the cast blinks, pondering this.
Dani shakes her head. "Whatever, man," she mutters. "And just as immortal. And she was just as easy to capture, if you want to know."
"Do not boast, weird newby," Ororo responds gravely. "Your death sits in that cage, and she hears you."
"Oh, she'll kill me one day or another," Dani says, sounding a lot more cheerful about that fact than any sane person should, "but she will remember forever that I caught her, that I held her prisoner. So there's my immortality, eh? ...what am I, Canadian now?"
"HEY!" Logan yells.
"Y' can't talk," Remy responds. "No, really, y' can't talk in a Canadian accent."
Logan harrumphs and crosses his arms.
Remy gives him a WTF eyebrow for a moment.
"Now, you were on the road hunting for your own death," Dani goes on. "And I know where it awaits you. I know him... that one... no I don't! I have no clue who the Orange Bull is!"
"I-" Remy begins, but Kurt quickly smacks a hand over his mouth, chuckling nervously.
"Ixnay on the upidstay," he whispers.
"Who y' callin' upidstay!" (5)
"Do you speak of the Orange Bull?" Ororo asks, deciding to ignore the idiots. "Tell me if you do, and where he is, if you know."
"The Orange Bull of King Magnus," Dani agrees. "So you know of the Bull! Well, he'll not have you. You belong to me... that sounded really, really kinky."
"You know better," Ororo agrees.
"I thought you would," Kitty replies, "after all we found all that leather in your room..." (6)
Ororo shoots her a horsey death glare. "Keep your poor shadows if you will, but let me go. And let her go, too. I cannot see her caged. She is real, like me. We are two sides of the same magic. Let her go. No, no, please, leave her there... that's all I need, more competition for Forge."
"There's more people after me?" Forge asks, not certain whether to look afraid or elated.
"Uh... no..." Kurt says. "Are there?" he asks Remy, who shrugs.
"Have y' ever seen another pairing fic with evo Forge?" is his response.
"...Good point." (7)
"I'd quit show business first!" Dani cries. "Do you think I don't know what the true witchery is, just because I do what I do? There's not a witch in the world that hasn't laughed at Dani Fortuna and her homemade horrors... but there's not one would've dared... dared what?"
"To lick a fish?" John asks, and Wanda gives him a WTF look. (8)
"The harpy and me, we are not for you," Ororo responds, blinking placidly.
"Who are you for then?"
"I don't think I've ever heard a more pointless question," Remy mutters.
"Do you really think those fools knew you without any help from me?" Dani laughs rather nastily. "No! I had to give you a horn they could see! These days, it takes a cheap mutant trick to make folk recognize a real unicorn."
The fake horn on Ororo's head glints, right on cue.
"But the Orange Bull will know you when he sees you, so you are safer here! You should thank me for protecting you!"
Ororo turns her head and admires her reflection in the bars.
Jamie begins to hum "You're So Vain" (his CD collection having been confisticated) only to have Rahne step on his foot. Jamie wisely shuts up.
"End of chapter!" Remy shouts. "Now where'd my bourbon go..."
"A question for the ages," John agrees.
(Indeed it is. A better one is why don't people review?)
(1) Crack from "Mutants of the Caribbean."
(2) Well, I do... and by the by, the Riotr-ness would be because Remy dies... if I ever get around to that fic you'll get it.
(3) His stage name in the circus, according to the InterNutter and Babelfish.
(4) Anyone else think how much Movie!Kurt goes on about the Munich circus a little annoying? And the poor lad won't even get to redeem himself in the third movie... -bursts into tears thanks to movie crappiness and lack of Kurt-
(5) Line from The Lion King of course.
(6) I THINK this is a reference to a Toddfan fic; oh, well, I remember reading SOMEWHERE that when the girls did roomraids Ororo turned out to have a bunch of S&M stuff.
(7) Seriously, have you? If you can find me a fic with Forge in a pairing that's not Storge, I'll write a oneshot for you.
(8) ...this was Clover's MSN signature today... I thought it was so weird I had to reference it. "Truth or Dare?" "Dare." "Lick the fish." "No!" "Lick it!"