Sixty-Six Inches.
That was what the Brotherhood’s new TV could boast as a screen size. It wasn’t the largest TV around, but it was more than most of the Brotherhood had ever gotten their grubby hands on, and they were putting it, the surround-sound system, and the DVD player through their paces. A quick trip to Blockbuster had rewarded the group with a vast selection of DVDs to watch, and the entire Brotherhood (minus the absent Quicksilver) had settled in for a Sunday of vegetating. It had started off peacefully enough; it was an all but unanimous decision to watch the Indiana Jones trilogy. It was when the credits for The Last Crusade began to roll that the debate began.
Then voices were raised…
…punches were thrown…
…mutant powers were brought to bear…
Finally, a few softly spoken words and an equal number of hex bolts from the Scarlet Witch put a stop to all of the violence, and a few drawn straws quickly sorted who got to choose the next movie, and who picked the one after that, and so on, and so forth.
Unlike the boys, Wanda didn’t particularly care what was put on; as long as it wasn’t the god-damned Sound of Music, she’d watch pretty much anything. She glanced at the DVD case Todd was casually turning over in his hands. ‘Oh Christ, anything but that!’
Todd hopped to the front of the lounge room and yanked Walking Tall out of the player, tossing it aside and holding up his own selection for all to see. “Check it out, yo, The Frog Prince! Woah!” The frog-like mutant was forced to dodge a number of thrown cushions and at least two unopened soda cans, but once the barrage ceased he glared at his fellow mutants. “Hey, it’s my turn to pick, and this is what I picked! Deal!”
Fred and Lance grumbled but settled back in their seats, too lazy and too intimidated by Wanda to really fight over it.
Grinning over his little victory, Todd stuffed the DVD into the machine and bounced to the sofa, landing right next to Wanda and ‘casually’ draped an arm across her shoulders. “You know, this is probably my favorite story, Shnoogie-woo; the beautiful Princess kisses the frog, turning him into a handsome Prince, and the two of them live happily ever after.” He leaned uncomfortably close to the Scarlet Witch and bared his yellow teeth in an attempt to grin in a suave fashion. “Getting any ideas?”
Wanda nodded. “Just one.”
The shimmering glow that lit up his body gave Todd a second’s warning, not that it did him any good.
*WHAM!*
Toad smashed into the ceiling, then gravity helped slam him back onto the couch, where he could only watch dazedly as the object of his affections left the room.
Wanda spent several minutes just staring into the open fridge, silently studying each of the foods and drinks in turn. If she hadn’t seen it herself, she would have thought that nothing less than fire could completely clean the mutated crap out of the refrigerator. She wasn’t entirely sure if Todd’s spit was a better option, but she had to admit, it was remarkably effective at solidifying the junk into a single mass solid enough to tear out in one hit. Of course, she wasn’t going to actually touch the inside of the fridge anytime soon, but at least there was more room in there now.
Shaking her head and moving her thoughts back to the present, she summoned a can of Pepsi and carried it to the dining room table, sitting across from the blue-skinned leader of the Brotherhood. “You’re back earlier than I expected.”
Ranma lifted his head from the table, sitting up straight before answering. “Xavier and Destiny couldn’t help me. Destiny, because her powers were screwed up about the same time I figured out I was in Mystique’s body, and Xavier because he couldn’t get into my head.”
The gothic teen popped open her can of soft drink and took a swig before speaking. “What about Agatha?”
“She gave me a two hour long lecture on the evils of mixing explosives and powerful magical artifacts, then made me hold a crystal ball for a while before telling me she’d get back to me.”
Wanda arched an eyebrow curiously. “That’s it?”
“She used some weird spells on me, then mumbled something about ‘twisted auras’ and ‘chaotic mystical traces’.” He shrugged. “I think she also said something about ‘tattered fragments of eternity’, but I wasn’t really listening at that point.”
Agatha’s former student smirked. “She does ramble on sometimes, doesn’t she?” The duo sat in silence for several minutes, before Wanda worked up the nerve to ask a question that had been bugging her for a while. “How did Mystique and Agatha meet, anyway? They don’t seem like women that move in the same circles.”
Ranma shrugged again, covering his mouth as he yawned widely. “When you live as long as Agatha and Mystique have, and you move around as much as Mystique has, you meet a lot of people. You know Wolverine? Mystique met him back during World War I.”
Blinking, Wanda couldn’t help being a little surprised. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen. Mystique is about a hundred and forty-five, though.”
Wanda put her elbows on the table, propping up her head on her hands as she stared out the window contemplatively. “I can’t imagine living that long.”
Standing up and moving to the fridge, Ranma spoke with his back to the teenage girl. “You get used to the idea. There were a couple of three hundred year old martial artists back in Nerima, and I figured I’d live that long too, if I wasn’t killed by one of my rivals or fiancés…or my fiancés cooking.”
“Fiancés? Plural?”
Ranma chuckled. Even one day after being out of that mess, he could see how amusing that whole deal must have looked to an outside observer. “It’s kind of a long…” He looked up at the ceiling and frowned. “…did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” The female Maximoff jumped as a cracking sound split the air, and the ceiling sank slightly in the middle, visibly splitting. “Okay, I heard that.”
Several seconds of groaning, splintering wood, and slowly sinking ceiling pushed Ranma into action. He threw Wanda over his shoulder and ran for the back door, clearing the house just in time as, bit by bit, the whole building collapsed into a pile of rubble.
Setting his load down, Ranma eyed the whole mess thoughtfully, and Wanda joined him in his studying after she brushed herself off. “…that was unexpected.”
The martial artist disagreed, rubbing his neck underneath his ponytail. “I’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier. That building was never really meant to handle earthquakes, explosions, and hex bolts.” Ranma froze, then cursed. “Kuso, the guys!” Breaking into a sprint, Ranma was at the front of the house in seconds, and found Lance lying on the lawn. He was helping the earth-shaking mutant to his feet when Wanda jogged up.
Wanda looked Avalanche up and down, taking note of all the little cuts on his face and arms, and the dirt and grass stains on his clothing. “Let me guess; the Blob threw you out the window?”
Lance took a second to compose himself, then nodded. “Yeah…moves fast for a big guy.”
With a shifting of brick and stone, the big guy in question casually waded out of the remains of the house, an unconscious Todd cradled carefully in his arms. “Hey Mystique, Todd’s bleeding!”
Ranma waved the hefty mutant over to the rest of the group. “Put him down over here so I can get a look at him.” Once Todd had been laid out, Ranma gave him a quick once over, using all the knowledge experience had taught Mystique and Tofu had taught Ranma. “He’s just knocked out, and most of these cuts aren’t too bad.” He thought it over for a second, then sighed, pulling his shirt off over his head and tearing it up, tying the makeshift bandage around a nasty gash on Todd’s arm.
Wanda pulled her eyes away from the muscles in Ranma’s dark-blue back to ask him a question. “Is it okay for you to tear up clothes that you morph like that?”
Ranma finished tying off the black cloth before sitting back, and with little effort, he formed another shirt straight onto his body. “Making clothes like this is like growing hair or fingernails, and it’s no big deal to lose a little bit every now and then. I’ll just have to eat a bit more to regain the lost mass.”
Unable to figure out why that statement just sent a chill down his spine, Lance sat himself down on the ground. “So, what are we going to do now?”
Looking up at the night sky, Ranma sighed, knowing that the idea that just popped into his head, while a good one, probably wouldn’t go down well. “I know somewhere we can go for the night. Plenty of rooms, plenty of food, they won’t care that we’re mutants, and they’ve got a fully stocked medlab.”
Wanda groaned, burying her face in her hands.
Ignoring Wanda, Fred nodded, liking what he heard. “What are we waiting for?”
Lance, quicker on the draw than his much-larger team mate, quickly put two and two together and came up with- “Xavier’s Mansion!?”
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(Posted Wed, 29 Mar 2006 14:23)
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