"HER!"
The
quartet winced at the assault on their ears as they entered the den
to see a lump under a blanket. Said lump twitched slightly, sobbed a
little, and settled again before screaming once more.
"SHE
DID THIS! SHE! SHE!"
"Who did what?" Tabitha asked.
"Are we talking about Wanda?"
At the sound of her voice,
the blanket was thrown back. A severely-singed Pietro glared at her
in combined fear and venomous loathing. One hand pointed squarely at
her.
"You! You did it, you bitch! How could you do this to
me? What'd I do to you?"
She blinked. "What?"
"Pietro,
what are you talking about?" Lance demanded.
"Her!"
Pietro seethed. "Boom-boom! She's left bombs all over the
boarding house! I've been blown up at least a dozen times today! I
can't get out of the goddamn house because of her
booby-traps!"
Tabitha blinked. "I didn't leave any bombs
lying around."
"Yes you did!" Pietro shrieked. "You
did, you bitch! You tried to kill me!"
"But I didn't,"
she said, confused. "I mean, yeah, it'd be funny as hell if I
did. But I didn't."
"So how'd he get so singed?"
Todd wanted to know. "Been playin' around with the stove or
somethin'?"
Pietro's eyes went wide. "LIAR!" he
screamed, spittle flying from his lips, hand still pointing. "LIAR!
YOU'RE A LIAR AND YOU TRIED TO KILL MEEEE-"
Abruptly a
glowing plasma bomb appeared, balanced on his outstretched hand.
Pietro's eyes went impossibly wider, and with a howl he jumped over
the back of the couch, cowering. The bomb fell onto the couch,
exploded, and turned a pillow into a cloud of feathers.
Everyone
was very quiet for a moment.
"Holy fuck," said Lance at
last.
"You see?" Pietro's head popped up from behind the
couch. "You see what she did to me? She tried to blow my hand
off! She tried to kill me! And I didn't do anything to her!"
"But..."
Tabitha looked stunned. "But I can't make bombs appear that
far away. I gotta make 'em appear near me. I couldn't have done that
even if I tried, and I didn't!"
Pietro opened his mouth,
evidently about to scream again; Freddy cut him off. "She's
right, she couldn't have done that. Somethin's funny here."
Todd
frowned. "Pie-pie gets hit with Boom-bombs when she ain't
responsible... I can't get hurt when people try to beat me up...
Lance's hands're stickin' to whatever he touches... Freddy's actin'
all hyper..." he shook his head. "This is fucked, yo. It's
like all our powers got sw-"
Abruptly a large black van
pulled up out the front of the boarding house and honked its
horn.
"Oh for fuck's sake," Lance snarled, and stormed
off toward the door. Shrugging, the other members of the Brotherhood
followed him.
By the time the Brotherhood all made it outside,
the occupants of the van had gotten out. Scott and Jean stood front
and centre, flanked on either side by the quartet of Rogue, Evan,
Kurt and Kitty.
"What do you want?" Lance demanded.
"This is not a good time for one of your goddamn
self-righteous hero runs. Make it quick."
Scott looked a
little taken aback at the unusual greeting, but recovered admirably.
"Lance, we're making sure everything is okay here."
"What?"
"You
guys have been firing off your powers like crazy all morning.
Professor X is worried something's happening. Plus if you keep it up,
somebody's gonna notice."
Pietro glowered at him. "Fuck
off, Summers."
Scott looked startled. "Huh?"
"I
have had the worst fucking day of my life and you are making it
worse. Now fuck off!"
Jean frowned. "Quicksilver, we're
only trying to help..."
"I said fuck off!"
It
was at this point that the most unfortunate occurrence of the day
took place.
Namely, Pietro got angry.
Face twisted into a
furious grimace, he charged forward a couple of steps - and a cluster
of plasma bombs appeared all around him. His face melted into an
expression of terror in an instant before they blew, throwing him
clear across the yard.
Lance, who was nearest to Pietro, had a
bomb roll right next to his foot. Instinctively he jumped back; this
proved a mistake. The jump in question sent him sailing up into the
air, where he crashed headfirst into the roof awnings. The wooden
beam cracked slightly, he fell straight down onto the steps of the
Boarding house, and he remained there, very evidently
unconscious.
The three remaining Hoods stared blankly at the
destruction before they decided to defend themselves in case the
X-Men counterattacked. At the same instant, Tabitha wound up to throw
a plasma bomb and Fred charged straight at Scott. The moment Tabitha
moved, the ground shook; a chunk of earth suddenly fell away in the
centre of the yard, leading down into the sewer drains below the
street. Tabitha staggered at the unexpected quake, tripped, and
dropped into the hole with a shriek.
Fred fared no better. He
crossed the yard in a blur, stumbled as the ground shook, fell over,
and rolled magnificently head-over-heels to connect soundly with the
side of the van. He fell to the ground, groaning, and made no further
move.
Last of all, Todd stood in front of the Boarding House,
alone. Six X-Men looked blankly back at him. Then, shrugging, he
leaped into the air and whipped his tongue out toward
them.
Unfortunately, the leap and the whip covered distances of
two feet and two inches, respectively. Tongue sticking out from
between yellowed teeth, Todd managed a small hop that was almost
spectacular in its unimpressiveness, but was just far enough to carry
him to the point where Tabitha had been standing. Howling in protest,
he toppled into the now-open drain, only to have Tabitha's voice join
his as he evidently landed right on top of her.
Completely
unscathed, the stunned and bewildered X-Men looked at each other and
blinked.
"Does this mean we win?" Evan asked
eventually.
"What do we do now?" Kitty wanted to
know. Jean looked incredibly confused.
"They... they beat
themselves. It was like they were using each other's powers. What the
hell?"
"I have a suggestion," Kurt said after a
moment. They looked at him and he shrugged. "I suggest that we
get back in the van, we wind up the windows very tightly, and we
return to the Institute before whatever is wrong with the Brotherhood
attacks us."
There was a moment of silence. Then Rogue
nodded.
"Fuzzy's idea wins. Lemme in that van."
----
The roar of the van's engine roused Fred; cracking one eye he looked up at the sky, then struggled his bulk into a sitting position. He was just in time to see the van tear off down the street, windows winding up as it went - incidentally catching what looked like someone's hair in the process. There was a howl of protest, the sound of a solid blow from within the van, and then the ponytail in question simply phased through the glass and vanished into the van. Then the van was gone.
Fred groaned and climbed to his feet. He wasn't used to
feeling... well, pain, and he was in a decent amount of it now. The
sugar rush from the Mars Bars had almost worn off, letting him think
coherently enough to realise that the others had been right -
something was seriously wrong with their powers.
Across the yard,
a groan came from somewhere inside a pile of leaves. The pile
wriggled, heaved, and eventually vomited forth Pietro, looking
decidedly more singed but less frightened before. Instead he seemed
to be about as confused as Fred felt.
"You okay?"
Pietro
nodded. "I... think so. Didn't do too much damage that time with
a soft landing."
"Awright. C'mon, we better help the
others. I guess we better. Yep."
Wincing, Pietro made his way
over to the hole where Todd and Tabitha had fallen. "Do I really
talk like that?"
"Like what? I dunno what you're talking
about. What're you talking about? Am I talkin' funny? I guess I am. I
must be. I'm talkin' like you. Whaddya mean like that? How come I'm
talkin' like you?"
Pietro made a face. "Guess so, huh.
Look, didn't you hear Princess Priss? She's right - we switched
powers somehow. I'm throwin' boom-bombs around, you're super fast,
Lance is jumping around like Toad... our powers got mixed
up."
"That's what I said, yo," came Todd's
disembodied voice from inside the hole. "I thought that's what
was happenin' 'fore all this fight started."
"So why
didn't you say so?" said Pietro.
"I got interrupted, yo.
Plus I weren't sure."
"Can you help us out of here?"
came Tabitha's voice. "It stinks."
"So? 'S your own
fault you're down there," Lance retorted, climbing to his feet.
Rubbing a large bump on his head he walked over to the hole and
peered in. "I told you my powers were hard to control. You get
too worked up and that's all it takes."
"Shut up and get
me out of here!"
"Hang on, yo," came Todd's voice.
"C'mere..."
"Hey, wait! What're you - let me go you
slimy piece of - SHIIIIIIIIIIT!"
On the last shrieked
word Tabitha flew upwards out of the hole, performed an unwilling
somersault in the air, and landed on her backside on the
ground.
Lance blinked at her. "What happened?"
"He
threw me!" Tabitha glared. "Fucking Toadboy threw
me!"
"He's not the Toadboy any more," Pietro
observed. "Toddie's the new Blobbo."
"Wait, wait,
wait." Lance raised his hands. "So we're all sure this is
what happened? We switched powers somehow?"
"Looks like
it, don't it?" Fred asked. "I guess it does. Yep. Looks
like we did."
Lance held his sore head. "Someone make
him stop."
"How the hell did we switch powers?"
Tabitha demanded. "What's going on?"
"Twenty bucks
says it were Boss-Man an' Boss-Lady," Todd's voice floated up.
"They'd prob'ly think this is funny as hell. An' good fer some
kinda experiment or somethin'."
"You don't have twenty
bucks," Pietro pointed out.
"I'll steal it from you,
yo."
"So what do we do?" Fred asked. "Should
we call 'em up? Huh? Yeah, we should. I guess we should. Ask what's
goin' on."
"I have a headache," Tabitha said.
"Get
used to it," Lance growled. "Anytime you use my powers
you're gonna get a headache. That's the way it goes now. Meanwhile I
got a headache from jumping into the fucking roof, so don't expect
any sympathy from me."
"Uh..." Pietro shrugged.
"I'm gonna go see if I can get hold of Mystique or Magneto.
'Kay?"
The others nodded; Pietro headed inside, carefully not
moving too quickly to stop boom-balls materialising around him. As
the door closed, Todd's voice floated up from inside the drain.
"So,
uh... someone gonna help me outta here, yo? I can't throw
myself..."
----
Frowning, Forge looked at the
device, then pushed it to the back of his desk.
"Alright,"
he admitted to Einstein. "It didn't work properly. I'm pretty
sure it did something but I'm not sure what that was. It's like the
nanobots' signals are bouncing off each other or something. So it
didn't work."
Einstein wriggled his nose at Forge and said
nothing.
"Don't worry, though," he said, reaching down
under the desk and taking out another, similar-looking device. "We've
still got batch number two to work with. I'm sure this time it's
gonna work perfectly."
Einstein looked skeptical.
"It
will!" Forge insisted. "I'm sure it's gonna work this time.
I threw in a few extra stabilisers this time, so they're not gonna
mess up each other's signals as long as they're working properly.
You'll see."
Einstein turned around and scurried back into
the soup can that served as his bed. Forge stuck his tongue out at
the hamster and depressed a button on the front of the machine.
