Take the Long Way Home

Sorry for the wait folks; let's just say that writer's block is hell and get on with it.

Fireinu- Glad to have another fan bud.

L1701E- Thanks for the permission to use Sonic Blue. And sorry about the whole mix-up about him not being a mutant. And thanks for the correction earlier about the Darkhorn too.

Agent-G- Sorry I took so long to update. No, it's not the canon Thornn, just an OC from a friend of mine. And I really love your work, especially your two spiderman/x-men crossovers.

Fluffy's numba 1 gal- Not really, I just thought that he'd make a good addition to my story, plus it helped explain Sebastian's demon heritage.

Alleycat588- Well, maybe not dead broke, but pretty darn close. And my muses would put up a pretty good defense, and a least give me some time to get away.

Moezy-Chan- Yeah, I liked that part a lot myself.

Dan-Shawn's not as much of a Gary-Stu as you may think, even he gets his ass kicked from time to time.

AzureDragoness-Yeah, I was a big fan of Zoids: New Century Zero. The Liger Zero, Raynos, and Shadowfox all tied for my most favorite in the series. Furry blue burrito with a tail? I thnk you may want to clean your fridge out more often. And I agree, Kiwi birds are pretty cool, but Cassowary's (sp?) are a lot meaner. Cookies for updates? Hmmm, I think that that's a fair trade. Make them chocolate chip and you've got yourself a deal!

SickMindedSummer- You're right, that shouldn't happen to a trenchcoat, especially not one attached to a guy that cool. Well, I thought about making her conscience sound like Rogue, but I figured one that sounded like Kitty would drive the point home better. Of course Logan would ruin a good sex moment; it's how he keeps himself amused in a house full of hormone driven teens. Remy would probably attempt to blow Logan up or something, which in turn would just make Logan mad. Okay, if Logan and Maria couldn't get their claws out of Frost's ass, don't you think that that would be more of a punishment for the two ferals, rather than the telepath? By the way, Hack's creations aren't robots, they're free thinking, realized computer programs.

Soulstress- Yeah, just like a cat with a wounded mouse, he won't kill him, because then he wouldn't have anything to "play" with. And yes, that is the Sharon being referred to.

Rosethorn3-Yes, yes it does.

Raliena-Yeah, but what am I gonna do, most of them are more powerful than I am, and they're fast enough to get out of my sphere of influence as an author/god, and go to other authors who would use them as their own muses.

Warconq- Yeah, I'm still writing this, it's just that I've just entered my senior year, and stuff is getting a little hectic. Shawn and Maria are back together now, and the get together of the Triad is coming up, in about ten more chapters, maybe less.

Andivari-Sorry about it being late, but stuff just happens. You know how it is man. No Triad get together yet, but Hack makes his fighting debut in about two chapters.

Animeluvr1-BINGO! Yes, I got the fluff guide, and I believe that it has helped immensely in my writing of fluff.

-AAA- Translation

AAA -telepathy

AAA -self debate, or conversation with feral side in Shawn and Rahne's case

Disclaimer: Hookt aun Fonix reelie wurkt fur mee!

Chapter 29:Mall Make-ups, and Sewer Scrimmages

Rick woke up, and stretched out. It had been two days since the incident with the girls, and he was finally ready to make his move. He had reminded Shawn of when he had covered his roommate's butt during an incident involving Logan, a toilet seat, and some super-glue. Then he had reminded Shawn how easily the identity of the perpetrator could be leaked to certain Canadian ears. Shawn had muttered something about Mexican banditos and dug out his wallet. He now had the funds to make said move.

He had also managed to convince Tabby to spend the day with him at the mall. It had been easy, once he had said that he was paying. He wandered down to the kitchen to grab a bite, idly scratching his chin before giving a jaw-cracking yawn.

"Hey Rick," Shawn greeted from the table. He and Logan were the only two there, sharing a fresh pot of coffee.

"'Lo," Rick grunted in response. As he went about getting his breakfast, Logan grabbed his shirtsleeve as he passed behind the feral. "What?"

"Remember this Shaggy, try anythin' an I'll know the nanosecond you get back. Comprende compadre?"

Rick nodded as Logan released his sleeve. "Ci." The feral gave a smirk and got up to leave.

"Bueno." And with that, he was gone. After a few moments more, the two boys heard the sound of one of his motorcycles starting up. A few minutes later, the two were eating and drinking in silence, when Maria walked into the room. Shawn perked up, and opened his mouth to say something, but Maria held up her hand, cutting him off. She sauntered over next to him, reached over, picked up the coffeepot, and upturned the nearly full container of boiling hot liquid over his head. She then turned, and sashayed out. Rick looked over at Shawn, who was trying desperately not to scream in pain.

"Think she's still mad?" he asked nonchalantly. Shawn just glared at him. At that moment, the two heard muffled giggling coming from around the corner.

"Jamie, if you have a camcorder in your possession, you're gonna need a lot more than just decoys to keep me from throttling the real you!" Shawn yelled. There was a frightened "Eep!" and then the sounds of a mad scramble. Rick looked sadly at his roommate.

"You do know that he's going to make copies of the tape now, and hand them out to the rest of the Institute, and the 'Hood as well, right?" Shawn glared at him some more. "Shutting up now."

Later

"Tabby, are you coming, or not?" Rick called impatiently from the bottom of the stairs. He'd been waiting at LEAST fifteen minutes.

"Yeah, yeah, hold your horses, Shaggy!" she yelled back.

Five minutes later, she was FINNALY ready to go. Grinning gallantly, the Texan escorted her to the garage and, ever chivalrous, opened her door.

The door to SCOTT'S car.

Tabby grinned.

Pretty soon they were out of Bayville, and were on the highway towards the nearest mall. Tabby, getting bored of the silence reached over and flicked on the radio. Absent-mindedly, she surfed through the channels. Suddenly, Rick grabbed her wrist.

"Wait! Go back!"

She adjusted the dial a bit, and a familiar guitar line came wafting to her ears.

"Wonderwall! Oh, man, I haven't heard an Oasis song since, like... '97. Man, I feel old."

Both grinning, they sang along, the words becoming more and more familiar as they went.

"Today is gonna be the day
That they're gonna throw it back to you
By now you should've somehow
Realized what you gotta do
I don't believe that anybody
Feels the way I do about you now
Backbeat the word was on the street
That the fire in your heart is out
I'm sure you've heard it all before
But you never really had a doubt
I don't believe that anybody feels
The way I do about you now

And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would
Like to say to you
but I don't know how

Because maybe
You're gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You're my wonderwall

Today was gonna be the day
But they'll never throw it back to you
By now you should've somehow
Realized what you're not to do
I don't believe that anybody
Feels the way I do
About you now

And all the roads that lead you there were winding
And all the lights that light the way are blinding
There are many things that I would like to say to you
I don't know how

I said maybe
You're gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You're my wonderwall

I said maybe
You're gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You're my wonderwall

Said maybe
You're gonna be the one that saves me
You're gonna be the one that saves me
You're gonna be the one that saves me"

By the time the song had finished, Rick was pulling into a parking space. "After you." He said, and she got out of the car.

A blast of cool, air-conditioned atmosphere hit the duo as soon as they got through the doors. Tabitha breathed in deeply. She could already smell the Auntie Annie's pretzels.

"So, what do you want to do first?" Rick asked, nerves tingeing his voice slightly.

She looked at him like he was crazy.

"We SHOP."

32 purchases and three five-finger discounts later, poor Rick was ready to plotz.

"Are we done YET?"

"Eh. Let's eat." Tabitha said, already six feet ahead of him.

Rick prayed to the gods.

If any particular passerby had bothered to note what two crazy kids at a table in the food court were doing, they'd think those crazy kids were nuts.

They'd also be right.

Both Rick and Tabitha were hunched over their Slushees, sucking madly from their straws, hands on their necks to stop them from pulling away.

Wincing, Rick pulled away. "I can't do it! Brainfreeze-brainfreeze-brainfreeze..." he whimpered, clutching his head.

He waited a few more seconds as Tabitha sucked up the last of her Slushee, finishing, and winning, their endurance contest.

"Hah! Still the champ!" Tabitha crowed smugly, before wincing. "Ow..."

"So... now what?" asked the western mutant, after the searing buzz in his head had subsided.

"Well, I just got one question for ya, Shaggy... got any quarters?"

Grinning like maniacs, they raced each other to the arcade.

Rick was good at Street Fighter. No, Rick was great at Street Fighter. You might even say he excelled at it.

And yet, he was losing. He was losing very, very badly.

Try as he might to concentrate on the combating pixilated warriors, he couldn't take his mind of the fact that he was so close to Tabby he could hear her breathing, and the way she kept pressing up against him wasn't helping, either.

All in all, it was very distracting.

"K.O!" announced the game, siring yet another loss for poor Rick. "Looks like you lose again, Shaggy!" Tabitha said happily.

"It's a stupid game anyway." He muttered. "Let's go play Pac-Man."

"They don't HAVE Pac-Man here."

"What do you call that?" Rick asked, pointing to an older console that had a familiar yellow, dot chomping, cheese-wedge lookalike racing around the screen.

"That is a MISS Pac-Man."

"Same difference."

"Nuh-UH! She's MISS, not Missus! She doesn't need some stupid man in her life! She's her own woman!"

"...You're making way to big a deal out of this."

After a while, the two had taken to strolling around the mall, going into any stores that caught their eye. Rick actually fell asleep on one of the vibrating chairs in the Brookstone.

Tabitha shivered as they passed under another air conditioning vent. Her Slushee was catching up to her, and the fact that she was wearing nothing but a T-shirt didn't help the situation. (AN: To all those perverts out there, I know what it sound like, but it isn't like that!)

"You cold?" asked Rick, raising his pierced eyebrow.

"Maybe a little."

Rick effortlessly shrugged off his jacket and handed it to her. She quickly put it on.

'It smells like him,' she thought.

Rick stopped as they came up to the fountain, the bottom glittering from thousands of tossed-in pennies.

"Close you eyes." The Texan whispered in Tabby's ear. A small shiver ran up her spine, and she did as he asked. She felt something small, smooth and cool being slipped into her hand. A penny.

"Make a wish." He murmured. Suddenly, she knew exactly what she wanted, more than anything in the world. Smiling, she tossed the coin in.

"What did you wish for?" he asked as she opened her eyes.

"Well, if I told you, it wouldn't come true."

"Hey, c'mon, that's not fair! Tell me!"

"No."

"Please?"

"Nope."

"Pretty please?"

"Shut up."

-Back at the Institute-

Most of the occupants of the Institute were watching Shawn do the either the bravest, or stupidest thing they had ever heard of anyone doing. He was going to intrude on one of Maria's Danger Room sessions. Bobby had set up a betting pool on how long it would take for Maria to finish thrashing him. Logan had put in at two hours for twenty bucks, while Kitty and Rogue had pooled their money and bet fifty bucks that neither one of them would come out of the room with a relationship related scratch. The odds on this were ten-to-one, house's favor.

Shawn stood outside the door to the small chamber that led into the DR, mentally prepping. 'Okay Shawn, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this.' Just go in already kid, Bahumut grumbled. 'Okay, I'm going in now,' he thought. He entered the room, and found that Maria was just exiting from the main DR. "Um, hey," Shawn gulped, "I need to talk to you for a minute, if that's alright with you." Maria was silent for a moment, debating in her head.

Go ahead, what's talking for a moment going top hurt, her newfound emotional side urged. He might end up hurting you, like everything else you've encountered until now, just walk away, the cynical side, honed by years of living under HYDRA's influence warned. In the end, she listened to her heart instead of her head. "I'm listening," she nodded, sitting down on one of the benches that lined the wall.

"Well," Shawn began, "I know that you were worried about me when I pulled that stunt that ended up getting me captured. But it just isn't in me to throw in the towel." Maria nodded, she had seen the surveillance tapes.

"Go on."

"And about the whole rescue thing, I can't really apologize for that. I actually play cards with two of the Acolytes and Lance every other Thursday (1). That's why there wasn't a real fight to get free. But I should have tried to at least contact you and tell you that I was okay. And for that..." Shawn braced himself. "For that I...GULP...I at least deserve a punch in the jaw for the grief you went through, so just go ahead and lay one on me." That said, Shawn closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable. He waited for a moment, but the expected mind numbing pain of her fist making a through examination of his molars never came. After a moment, he cracked an eye open, and looked at Maria. She had a small smile on her lips as she shook her head slowly.

"I think that you've suffered enough." Then she leaned closer, and whispered in his ear. "But if you ever do anything like that again, I'll take you up on the offer." With that she turned and headed for the door. Halfway there though, she stopped and turned back to him, offering her hand with a smile. He took it with a smile of his own.

-Hack's DHQ (Digital HQ)-

Jon was typing tirelessly on the huge console that made up the center point of his base, scrutinizing the data flow across screen. Occasionally he would switch to a different program that displayed different graphs, and input a few figures, look at how this affected the graph lines, and then switched back to the original coding program. Scratch and Decoy were sleeping on rugs behind him, with a large shadowed shape behind them. A ringing sound from the console had him stopping in his endeavor for a moment. He struck a sequence of keys, and a video feed window opened on-screen, displaying Biker's face. "What have you got for me Biker?"

"Sorry boss, no definite activity yet. From what me an' Sidewinder have been able to piece together though, it looks like they'll be leaving the academy soon to pull off some heists or somethin'. How's it comin' on your end?" Hack shook his head tiredly.

"I'm having trouble stabilizing the quantum matrix. But other than that it's just about ready to go. It'll be ready to go by the time they leave the academy." Over the video link, Biker smirked.

"They won't know what hit 'em, eh boss?" Hack copied his friend's smirk.

"Let's just say that Frost is going to regret trying to keep my girlfriend away from me."

(1) They changed it from every Thursday so they wouldn't get caught by their respective groups.

---To Be Continued---

Well, Rick and Shawn have made nice with their girls and Hack is making preparations to take his girlfriend back from Emma Frost. Next chapter, Kid Razor makes an explosive entrance onto the mansion, and makes a surprising request. What does the "Jukebox Hero" want with the X-Men? And why did they have to choose that day to accidentally sample some of Kitty's cooking?