This work is a piece of fanfiction. Had this been an actual comic, small dogs would be howling. X-Writers is a non-profit organization composed entirely of people without enough money to make suing them worthwhile. In fact, at the moment I am running a negative bank account and all you would get is my dirty laundry pile. I take no responsibility for what would happen then. ***************************************************************** X-Force 52 "Downtime" Writer: Elizabeth Celeste Editor etc: Marysia. ************************************************************* "Wham! Smash! Thunk!" With a speed that belied his massive bulk, James Proudstar brought a rain of blows from his bo stick down on his team mate Shatterstar's head. Normally James would feel kinda bad about injuring a teammate during a training exercise. However, after a week cooped up in a small hotel room with the other six members of X-Force, any sense of regret was lost. Right now beating Shatterstar over the head was the most wonderful thing in the world. Jimmy wasn't the only one who felt that way. X-Force now had a house (well half of one) and a backyard, (they used the whole thing). It was far more spacious then the hotel room, but the past week was still fresh and traumatic. The prospect of a morning "workout" session held almost universal appeal. At least to the male majority of the team. Theresa Rourke Cassidy, team leader and master of the sonic scream was sleeping off her celebration of the night before, and Tabitha Smith, Boomer to most, had declined the offer to join with a cryptic "I don't think I should be doing that. I might get hurt". As if getting hurt had ever stopped her before. Oh well. To each their own. The guys were now engaged in what they did best--senseless violence and blowing things up. "Sizzle", Roberto Da Costa gave up trying to get past Caliban and sent a bolt of pure energy right past Jimmy's nose. It provided the momentary distraction, just time enough for Shatterstar to escape from under the Bo stick, and begin indiscriminately reigning his own hail of blows with the flat of his swords. The head injury hadn't slowed him down much, and he took a flying leap, bouncing off of Bobby's back, and landing on top of the ancient wooden picnic table at the edge of the yard. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong moment to land on the table- his friend and teammate Rictor was on the same path. With a shove and slight use of his vibratory powers, Rictor pushed 'Star off the table. He stood there, arms raised to the shy and began to yell. "I win! I am King of the Table". The others ignored this declaration of victory, and, finding a common foe, all dog piled on. Ten minutes and three head injuries later they finally gave up the morning workout, a weeks worth of aggression removed. Nobody had really learned much, and their skills had been as sharp as ever. But getting back into the old mold, after a week of inactivity was nice. House hunting had been an experience that made fighting the Phalanx easy, and that was for the people who actually had gone on the hunt. Those left behind had it even worse. ********************** It had taken Val Cooper over a week to locate X-Force. It was embarrassing actually. X-Force was known for instantly telegraphing it's location with spontaneous property damage. Of all the various mutant teams who felt compelled to put an X in their name, X-Force was almost always the easiest to locate. Unfortunately the team was being unusually quiet. Val was disappointed. However the newly acquired phone number, for a newly acquired Los Angeles duplex, was now in her hands. "Ring, Ring, Ring" "'Yello" "Hello, this is Val Cooper. I'm trying to reach X-Force" "You got us, Val. Are you trying to arrest us again?" The government's occasional instance that the members of X-Force were actually dangerous criminals was a running point of contention. Blow up just a few buildings and get labelled for life. "No Tabitha - actually I have a job for your team" "Isn't that kinda what X-Factor's for, to do that kinda stuff." "This concerns X-Factor. That's why I need X-Force. I want you guys to help find Jamie Madrox. " "He died didn't he? It's not like he's gonna go anywhere." "Not really. At least one of the dupes is alive and in the Los Angeles area. He'd apparently working as a stunt double for Kevin Bacon. And I need your team to help find him." "Why don't you talk to Theresa then." Tabitha put her hand over the receiver and let out an impressive yell "Terry! Telephone! Val Cooper wants to talk to you!" 30 minutes later Dr. Valerie Cooper hung up the phone and let out a yell of her own. It had taken surprisingly little to convince the X-Force members to help find the surviving dupe of Jamie Madrox. In fact they had sounded almost desperate for something to do. Too bad they weren't willing to take the damn cat. She picked Emma out of the stack of documents she was eating, "You know cat, even X-Force won't take you. If I was you I would be ashamed of my self." The cat continued to ignore Val in the way only cats can, and began to make a snack out of the telephone cord. "I should have let Edmund have you, he wanted you so much." The cat was scarfing down on the cord as if made to eat plastic. "Some wedding present you were.". And Val abandoned the cat and went in search of a warm bath. If she had known that the cat _was_ genetically altered to consume plastic, and just about anything else for that matter- It wouldn't have reassured her anyway. ********************* "I HATE YOU SAM GUTHRIE!" Tabitha's scream was punctuated by the explosion of a bottle of shampoo. "I HATE YOU EXTERNALS!" This time it was the soap that met it's fate. "AND I REALLY HATE YOU CHRISTOPHER LAMBERT!" This time the hair care products were spared Tabitha's wrath. Which was fortunate since Rictor chose that moment to walk in. "Tabitha are you ok? If that was Shatterstar's shampoo I'll never hear the end of it". Tabitha was collapsed on the edge of the bathtub, perched over the remnants of perfectly innocent soap. And then she did something unusual. She started to cry. "No. I'm not ok. Does it look like I'm ok?" A small time bomb appeared, fuzzed and died. A second landed on a pair of well worn bunny slippers and scurried away to hide under the sink. Tabitha herself looked as pale and well worn as the slippers. The dark roots of her hair were even showing- something that never happened. Even Asgard hadn't revealed the secret of Tabitha's hair. "No. You look sick and you're roots are showing. You got the flu or something? Cause then the whole team's gonna catch it" Rictor was concerned. Not so much because she was sick, but that if the entire team came down with he flu, hell would ensue. "Ric, I can absolutely, with out a doubt guarantee that you can't catch what I got" She started to giggle a little. "Uh Tab, what are you talking about?" Never let it be said that Julio Esteban Richter was a whiz when it came to talking to women. He was simply confused. "You ain't got anything fatal?" "I wish. It's not gonna be fatal. I'm not gonna die. I'm gonna have a kid." The last few words were rushed and quiet. Tabitha slid down to the green tile floor from the edged of the tub. Rictor just kinda stood there attempting to absorb the information, and slid down to the floor himself, leaning against the sink cabinet. "How'd that happen?" "Well, the mommy bear and the daddy bear have this special hug..." Tabitha was still giggling through the sarcasm. "I know that. I mean how'd you let that happen?" Ric was still absorbing the information. The idea of Boomer as a mother took a little getting used to. Make that a lot of getting used to. "I didn't _let_ anything happen. Sam and I got stupid. We actually listened to Gideon" Tabitha switched from the giggles to sarcasm. "What's Gideon got to do with anything?" It wasn't like he'd been an intimate participant in the whole thing. "Did you see Highlander?" "Yeah, well most of it. 'Star got bored half way through and took the remote..." "Like that's surprising. Anyway Gideon wrote Highlander about a bunch of immortals called Eternals. Only two big differences 'tween the Eternals and the Externals..." "The sword stuff right?" That was about all Ric had picked up from what had seemed a rather insufferable film. "And the sterility" Tabitha added on. "Madre de Dios. I didn't need to know that." "Yeah, well we did. About four months ago." "Did you tell Sam?" "Nope. I didn't know for sure, didn't want to know, till after the whole Reignfire thing. And then he was 'SAM GUTHRIE: X-MAN' and we pretty much broke up. And I've been in some sort of denial thing since" "This sucks." "Tell me about it." *************************** (The Mansion, Westchester) "You wanted to see me sir?", Sam entered Professor Xavier's study with trepidation. The entire room seemed permeated with he professors personality, and it was rather unsettling. "Yes. Sam- I need you to go on a solo mission" "Ah'd be honoured sir." He was nodding his head like an eager puppy. It was a bout time that the Professor and the rest of the X-Men acknowledged that he had experience at this kind of thing. Sam was a very different man from the New Mutant who could barely control his power. "I need you to take X-Force their furniture and personal belongings. They like you and will be more willing to tell you if some thing is going wrong in California. I don't approve of them taking off by themselves, and I want you to keep an eye on them. They trust you." Xavier, to be blunt, didn't actually approve of much of anything about X-Force. They were to hard to control, and simply too dangerous to be left alone. "Ah'll do my best Sir." Sam tried to keep his enthusiasm under control. No point in having to lie to the telepath about how nice it was to be going home. "Someone will fly you out in the Blackbird tomorrow morning. I expect it to be returned intact." Xavier held memories of the Avengers loss of a Twin Jet to some young punks. That wasn't going to happen to him. "You should probably take the medical kit as well. There may be a chance that the team was exposed to the Legacy virus here at the mansion." Xavier then proceeded to drone on about the glory of the dream and the need to conquer the Legacy virus, not realizing he was asking Sam to betray his old teammates and friends. Or at least realizing and not caring. ************************** Tabitha had finally grown bored of Rictor's presence. She shooed him out of the bathroom, and decided to resume puking in peace. "Ric- I don't want you telling anyone- I kinda want to do it myself. Tomorrow, after I tell Sam." She then proceeded to push him out, closing the door behind him. Rictor took the clue and scuttled out, still trying to process the fact that _Tabitha_ of all people, was having a baby. It was more then a tad surreal. Downstairs was almost deserted. For the first time in the three weeks since their arrival in California, everyone was finally going on their separate ways enough to allow for some privacy. The sound of Nintendo resonated from around the corner. Star was apparently attempting to best his record high score on the Animaniacs game. The sickly sweet music was filling the main room, apparently 'Star was stuck on the water level again. Ric sympathized. It was an absurdly hard game for one based on a kids tv show. "Star- is that game still kicking your ass?" "No. I am merely attempting to increase my score." Shatterstar sounded a little miffed at the implication that he was unable to conquer the game. Just because the only character left was Dot didn't mean he was losing. "You only got Dot left. And there's five levels left after this. Give up 'Star". Realism intruded on the game. Momentarily distracted, Dot succumbed to the attentions of the sea-monster. "I am losing my edge. I have done much better" Shatterstar was not accepting defeat kindly. "I am a warrior. Mortal Combat can best me in an honourable way. The Warner brothers cannot". "You forgot their sister Dot. Lighten up. Look, you wanna go out- I want a slurpee. And I bet you can't speak the language the clerk does. It'll be a challenge me amigo". Hauling 'Star outside was probably far safer then leaving him to rot against the Warners. "Fine. We will go in quest of slurpees. Do you think that this time they will have Cherry. " "No way to find out but by going" ******************************* (The college campus) "Bobby, Why do the people ride bikes so fast. That hairless boy almost ran Caliban over." Caliban and Roberto were taking their purple and fuzzy selves respectively to the campus of the University of Los Angeles. It was only a mile from the duplex, and promised several hours of cheap entertainment. Terry had asked for volunteers to explore the neighbourhood while she and Jimmy started to track down Jamie Madrox. The university seemed to be an easy opportunity to explore and to get out of the duplex. Two image inducers, repaired, resurrect, but still sightly off kilter aided the process. The University was a reasonable size, with a fleet of crazed bicyclists, all rushing to class, and none paying any head to the pedestrians. A boy suffering from an unfortunate haircut, had been the worst. "I don't know Caliban. What is happening happens. Los dos hermanos were much closer." "No. Caliban thinks Hairless Boy much closer. Caliban wishes to phase like Kitty Pryde". "How do you know Kitty?... Oh I forgot. Did you kidnap her or something? It would be useful to phase." Bobby dodged another of the bicyclists, this time one with a stuffed Banana stapled to his shirt. Caliban almost marry Kitty. But Kitty didn't want to live with Morlocks. So Caliban say no." "I forgot all about that. That was nice of you. Hey- why is everybody going into that building?" Sunspot pointed to the large lecture hall that was the focus of the streams of unwashed humanity. "Why, for class. Bobby want to go see?" Caliban seemed to have perked up. Being raised in a sewer offers few opportunities for an education. "Sure, lets go crash a class. Maybe it will be something neat." And with that the image inducer twosome entered voluntarily a public policy class that the rest of the University was coming up with explanations to skip. ********************** (The Duplex) It was late. Theresa was attempting to sleep off some of the stresses of the past week. She was trying to be a team leader, but she had signed on to lead a very different team. They were having problems with this "Real Life" experiment. Problems of assimilation and culture. Not for the first time she cursed the circumstances that had resulted in not _one_ of her teammates experiencing anything near what could be called a normal upbringing. They had had no need for one. Tabitha was snoring and the air mattress squeaked when ever she moved, and Terry gave up. Not on the team yet. Not on herself yet, but definitely on any hope of sleep. So she wandered downstairs to find a drink. The fridge was depressingly empty of any appealing food stuff. Somebody had at least thought to put liquor in the back, hidden away behind the lettuce. "Which one a ye is drinkin' Zima? This stuff 'll kill ye." She was whispering her contempt on the teams drinking habits. "Ah'll bet ye belong tae Rictor little bottle. But ye're mine now" Zima may be a poor excuse for an alcoholic beverage, but it was her poor excuse for an alcoholic beverage. She grabbed the bottle and wandered in to the equally furniture free living room. The sliding glass door to the porch was open behind the curtains, letting a little incense tinted breeze in. Her curiosity piqued, Theresa went to investigate. It was a sign of the way things had been going for the team lately that the porch was the only part of the house to have furniture. Several decrepit lawn chairs faced out to what could only be described as the spectacularly boring back yard. Jimmy was there, risking life by sitting in one of the chairs, Zima in hand, staring off into space. "Jimmy, ye know this Zima is crap" "Oh, that's you Theresa, you startled me. Don't blame me for the Zima, 'Star bought it." He looked a little surprised that anyone had managed to sneak up on him. Usually no matter how quiet his enhanced hearing managed to pick up the sounds. ` "'Star would buy Zima. I t'ought the stuff belonged tae Rictor. What are ye doin' out here at this time o' night? I thought I was the only one having trouble getting tae sleep?" "No. It's the anniversary of my Brother's death. Every year I try to mark it in some way. This year all he's getting is Zima an incense. I couldn't find anything else. It was a lot easier to do this when we were home at Camp Verde." He was getting maudlin, an unsettling emotion in one so big. "I miss the desert me self. Never thought I'd say that. But compared tae here life on the reservation was simple. No neighbours, no Nothing 'cept sun, sky and the occasional supervillian" Theresa was waxing nostalgic. She wandered over to sit in the chair next to Jimmy. "It was familiar. I grew up there. And for a whole everything I cared about was in Camp Verde. Arizona. If feel like a failure. I mean I should be in college, graduating and doing something with my life. I should be able to go home on holidays and be with my family. I shouldn't have to be hiding out in plain sight in Los Angeles, with a bunch of people who I simultaneously love and hate. I don't like it." "I knew what ye're saying. But Jimmy, you've been wonderful to me. Nobody else even has a clue as to what we need to be doin' here. Yer supportive. Ye don't freak. I need yer help. Ye even know how to grocery shop." "And being able to buy groceries is what makes me a valuable asset to the team?" "No. I don't care if ye never buy a bag of groceries again. But ye're there for me. Ye were there when we went to Ireland. And I think it's time I repay the debt." Theresa leaned over and kissed him. "Terry, what are you doing? Wait up there." Jimmy had never thought he would be the one to refuse her advances. Never. "I don't want to be some charity case. I don't want you to be "repaying a debt". He stood up. So did she. Theresa threw her arms around his neck, jumping to reach. "Yer being silly. This isn't about a debt. This is a friend. And I think it's the best anniversary memorial ye can get. Celebrate the living Jimmy." He scooped Theresa up like a child. "Are you sure about this? Really?" She nodded, and they made their way inside. ************************ Next Issue: "Zero Degrees to Kevin Bacon". The team looks for Jamie, Sam gets the news, and somebody collects socks. *********************** -- *Marysia* | "But it's bad and it's | "Let him kiss me with the Keeper of the Laby- | mad and it's making me | kisses of his mouth: for thy rinth Flame and Holy | sad because I can't be | love is better than wine." Virgin of Scotland. | with you." Cranberries | Song of Solomon 1:2 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://minuteman.com/x-writers/ http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~hawk/xmen.html