Claws, Clicks, and –poofs- with special guest Flashgriffin!

What Happened When They Babysat the X-Babies
Chapter 7
Breaking in Red's Bed

It was almost 7 pm., and all three authors and their muses were now thinking the magical words 'bed time'.

Flashgriffin marveled at the way her muse, a seemingly confirmed bachelor, had handled the kids. They were all fed, and now they were all playing - contentedly, even - on the equipment Remy had conjured up in the Danger Room.

"Is Remy good, or what, Chere? I got de way wit de Lil' ones!" Gambit gloated, throwing an arm around Griffin and hugging her close.

"Yep," she said, around a mouth of double-cheese-pepperoni-ham-and-pineapple, "You sure do, Gambit. It's amazing!"

"Well, Chere, it's like Gambit always sayin', you got to know what your enemy gon' to do before he do it, den intercept him." Remy smiled, stuffing one of the leftover pieces of pizza in his own mouth.

"When are the others due back?" Griffin asked. She was glad they had finally gotten the kids under control, but she was looking forward to getting them into bed. All the authors and Trevor had to do was wait for the rest of the grown-up X-Peoples to return to the mansion. Then they could leave.

"I t'ink Red an' Scooter be back before 1 am. Hank an' most de others went to a seminar in Chicago. Rogue out drinkin' wit Stormy. Dey be back home before dawn, I hope."

"Well, things are under control here. And if I know Yez and Ice, they are doing okay, too. All we have to do is get these tykes to wind down, pop them into some holo-beds, and then wait for our relief. It should be real smooth sailing from here on out."

No sooner had she said that than Shadowkitty fell off the teeter-totter she was on, with Icebaby on the other end. She skinned her knees and began to wail. Then Icebaby hit the holo-pavement with a thud and also began to cry. Cyke ran over to Shadowkitty and tripped on his own shoes - not the laces, mind you, just the shoes - falling to the ground and hitting his face on the pavement. When he looked up, his face was a mess of blood and snot from his nose, and tears from his shrieking. Hanging upside down from the monkey bars, Gumbo took one look at Cyke, and at Shadowkitty's bloody knees, and hurled all the pizza he had eaten. Colossussus, lil' Beast, Icebaby and Misti Q looked at the pile of puke under Gumbo, and they themselves began to blow chunks.

Only Captain Amerikid was left un-bloodied, un-crying and un-puking. He sighed, slapping his hands to his face and shaking his head.

Remy and Griffin sat still, eyes glazed over and hearts sinking, amazed yet again at what could happen in the space of 92 seconds when kids were involved.

***

Ice began to cry silent tears. Her lips were clamped tight and her eyebrows were drawn together. She looked like she had a really bad headache. On top of the really bad haircut.

"Baby, I'm so sorry… I know how much ya like - er, liked yer long hair. But yer just as beautiful now! Hell, ya look even better!" Logan leaned toward her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close.

She glared at him. Her lower lip began to tremble, "What are you saying, Logan?! That I didn’t look good before?" She sobbed and buried her face in her hands.

"No no no no no! Dammit, don’t go twistin' my words around woman! That ain't what I meant an' ya know it!"

Ice's head popped up and she shook a finger at him. "Well, let's all be careful not to upset big bad Logan! God knows that's all that matters! It’s a good thing Sparkler popped her gum in my hair and not yours, huh?! Cuz despite the fact that your hair would grow back by morning, and mine's gonna take years, that'd be a real problem, right?!" Ice screamed at him, then cried, shoving him away. Logan shook his head, looking down. This was not going well. Trevor melted into the corner with Sugah, Copycat and Lil' Quicksilver, the four of them pretending to play Uno.

Sparkler came up to Ice, snot running down her nose and sobbing. "M… Mi… Miss Ice, I'm *hic* I'm *hic* s-sorry fer getting' gum in yer pretty hair! I *hic* din't mean to! Honest!" She sniffed and rubbed her sleeve all up her messy face. "I-I was just blowin' bubbles when *hic* Witchie made me m-move!"

"I did not! You big liar!" Witchie screamed, crossing her arms.

"Oh, shut up kid, I heard ya hexin' Sparkler." Logan looked over at the little red witch and glared. She shut her mouth immediately. Sparkler began to cry harder and Ice suddenly felt worse for her than she did for herself.

"You can cut off my hair if you wanna…" Sparkler sniffed her offer, and made Ice cry all over again.

She leaned forward and pulled the little girl into a hug. "It's okay, Sparkler. I know you didn’t do it on purpose. Accidents happen." Sparkler put her head on Ice's shoulders and hugged her back, yawning and crying at the same time.

Logan rubbed the little girl's back reassuringly. "That's right, kid, accidents happen." He sounded all reassuring while giving Ice a hopeful look of puppy-dog-please-forgive-me-eyes at the same time. Ice shot daggers at him with a look and moved away with the little girl, whispering maternal things like 'don’t worry', and 'I'm not mad at you.' Logan whimpered quietly and tried to ignore the fact that the rest of the kids, and even Trevor, poor, poor, foolish Trevor, were snickering at him behind his back.

***

Over in the boathouse, things had gone from controlled bad to chaotically awful. The boys were all covered in potting soil, grape kool-aid and pudding. The little girls had escaped to the kitchen and decided to fix themselves a snack. By themselves. After about 30 minutes of the insanity, Yezra shook herself out of the self-induced coma and screamed her head off at them.

She cleaned up the girls for a second time, and Nick was left with the duty of soaping up and hosing down the boys. All the kids' clothes were still in the wash, needing to go through twice this time. The lone, frightened adults decided to dress them for bed instead, putting a T-shirt and a pair of Scott's boxers on each one of them, securing them with safety pins at the waist so they would not fall down. Luckily Jean was also a fanatic about Scott's boxers matching all his clothes, so he had plenty of them to go around.

"Yez, we gotta clean this crap up. Menace Girl is gonna fry our brains if we don't." Fury finished pulling one of Scott's clean T-Shirts over Meatball's head. "We ain't even fed 'em proper!"

All the girls were making fun of Snaggletooth's hairy knees.

Pudding pops, dirt from the turned over potted palms, empty soda cans, scraps of baloney, various board games, magazines, and drying kool-aid gun fire was all over the boathouse. The kitchen was a mess of opened bags of chips and Doritos, dip, spilled soda and milk, more potting soil, peanut butter and melted candy bars.

"They ate!" Yezra tossed her hands in the air and pointed to all the food all over the place. "That's good enough!" She took the cleaned girls by their cleaned hands and walked them to the spare room. The cleaned boys followed with Nick behind them.

"Get under the covers," Yezra barked, holding back the sheets on the king-size bed. "You boys get at the foot of the bed and you girls at the head."

All of them did as they were told, except, of course, Jeannie. She huffed and stood her ground, crossing her arms as she stood at the side of the bed, unaware that Nick was right behind her. Yez looked back at her and glared. Skirmish and Shower looked at each other, placing their hands over their ears, waiting for the screaming to start.

"What the hell is your problem?" Yez gave Jeannie a white-hot stare. She was sick of the precocious little fashion plate.

"You tell 'er, Miss Yezra," shouted Meatball with glee. Tink giggled.

"Yeah! Give her heck!" Snaggletooth bellowed.

"Don’t say heck, dat's very bad," CreepyCrawler scolded.

"Make her suffer! Torture her!" Magneato added, waving his hands around as if to help.

"Shut. Up."

Everyone got quiet. Yez looked up at Nick, and had to suppress a grin. The vein on his forehead was popping. His fists were clenched. He was taking control. And it was a good thing, because she was getting tired.

"I will not shut up. I cannot wear these things to bed. I must have proper nightwear. And I will not sleep with all these others. I need my own bed." Jeannie stuck her nose in the air and looked away from all of them.

Nick leaned over and got really close to Jeannie's ear. His quiet voice was like hot metal. "Get in the goddamn bed now, you little brat, or I'll pull yer boxers off and spank yer bare ass till it's red. An' I'll do it right here, in front o' all these boys. Got me?"

Jeannie swallowed, tried to maintain her haughty nature, and climbed in next to Shower. The last thing Yez and Nick heard before they turned off the light and closed the door was little Tink giggling again.

The adults shut the door and sighed, walking into the hallway.

"Well," Nick started, as Yez snaked an arm around his waist. He pulled her closer, both of them frightened at the messes in front of them. "Shall we get started cleaning this up?"

Yez blinked. "Nope."

"Yez, we can’t leave it like this. She'll kill us."

Yezra smirked, moving out of his protective embrace and making a careful path through the kitchen to the refrigerator. "I ain't cleaning shit, Nicky. No one's paying me to be here. Had we stayed where we were… we'd already be passed out and sleeping happily, recovering from the great sex we were building up to." She grabbed a half-filled bottle of white wine and shut the door, smiling at him mischievously. "Miss Red Menace can clean her own house when she gets home from the opera. I'm gonna get in that new bed of hers with this here bottle. Yer welcome to join me if you'd like." She winked at him, leaping over the messes, and headed back towards the master bedroom. Nick grumbled momentarily, then smiled and followed her into the bedroom.

***

Outside, a storm was beginning to brew. Little drops of rain began to fall and thunder and lightening was booming off in the distance, but getting closer. Three mutants sat in a tree, overlooking the French doors to the kitchen.

"I wanna get this done before it starts raining," the one said, his yellow eyes glowing in the dark. He put up a ten-fingered hand to his face and scratched the purple fur there. "I hate the way my fur feels when I'm wet."

"Oh, stop complaining, we're being paid well." The green-skinned woman with gills on her neck wheezed. She brushed back her long black hair with a set of sharply finned fingers, till it fell behind her shoulders and sighed. "Besides, you can do with a little rain. You stink."

"Both of you shut up. We have to do this tonight. There are only a few real X-Men on the grounds. Those kids are as good as ours," the last mutant hissed, his red eyes blinked side to side like a lizard's, and his black tongue flicked out of his scaled mouth. "Weapon X wants 'em. I don’t hardly give a damn for what. They paid us well, and they paid us up front. So we get the job done, now. Does everyone have their boxes?"

The other two groaned.

"You are such a bossy bitch, Melvin," said the ten-fingered purple-furred one, whose name was Martin. He held up his box and sneered at Melvin.

"Yes, and a very bad dresser, too." The green-skinned female huffed, waving her box in the air. Her name was Miranda. "But at least you don't smell."

***

Yezra took off her sweater and smirked at Nick, as he gulped down some wine. "I mean, I know I'm only one lil' ole white girl, and not a half a dozen pretty As-"

Nick put his fingers to her lips, shutting her up. "That was a script. You'll do just fine, baby," he grinned, eager to pick up where the poker game left off. He sat down on the edge of the pleasantly decorated, brand-new bed, taking off his combat boots.

"You sayin' you didn’t enjoy that part of the storyline? I can’t wait to see what happens when you do enjoy it." She grinned at Nick evilly and took a swig off the bottle, handing it back to him. He watched her closely as she bent over to remove her shoes.

"Oh I enjoyed it," he admitted, taking another swallow and finishing it off, "It's just better when I don’t pay fer it, an' I can concentrate on one."

"Nicholas Joseph Fury, you are a very bad man," she grinned, pulling him down to the bed by his T-shirt.

After a lot of giggling, Yez and Nick were just about to start breaking in Jean's new bed for her, when a sudden rumble of thunder sent eight kids running and screaming, from the spare bedroom into the master bedroom. They all descended on the bed, ripping them apart, the boys clinging to Yezra and the little girls clutching at Nick.

She looked at her muse, trying to keep the four squirming boys from falling off her and onto the floor, however reluctantly. Her lip curled back in a disappointed fashion. "There went that idea," she sighed.

After they got the kids to calm down, they were faced with the reality that they were going to have to sleep with them. Jeannie tried to maintain her coolness by lying down on her back on the side of the bed, arms crossed, but never letting her elbow break contact with Nick's arm. Shower and Skirmish were each wrapped around his waist, eyes closed and not moving. Tink, the tiniest, had managed to curl up under his chin and was clinging to his soft SHIELD sweatshirt.

Yezra sneered at her. That was supposed to be her spot. Snaggletooth was at her back, sucking away at the thumb in his mouth and his other fist balled up in her black t-shirt. CreepyCrawler and Magneato were at her feet, blue furry tail wrapped around one leg and Magneato's arms around another. Lil' Meatball was laying near her head, smiling away and nearly asleep. "Mommy…" he muttered happily, and rolled over to hug her around her neck. She winced.

"Heh… That's kinda cute," Nick chuckled softly.

"Shut up if you want to live to see dawn."

Nick smiled lazily and reached out to run hand through Yez's hair. They closed their eyes, neither one of them hearing or seeing the green-skinned black haired Miranda who had just shot a couple quills out of her fin-like fingers into them and remained still until they were totally unconscious.

***

Griffin finished wiping up the last X-baby face and gave Gumbo a dose of the Pink Stuff. He winced and swallowed it. Griffin ignored his discomfort. She wasn't as harsh as Yez when it came to children, only because she didn't have as many years under her belt spent hating them. But she was well on her way. She lifted Gumbo off the bathroom sink, handed him his jammies and told him to go change with the other boys. The girls were all lined up outside of the bathroom already, looking queasy but stable. She told them all to stay put and went to check on Remy's progress cleaning up the Danger Room. He had told Griffin that they simply couldn’t whisk the puke out of existence - it was not holo-vomit. It was real and it had to be cleaned up. She took the kids, and left him to the semi-digested pizza. When he balked, she said, "It was your pizza, so it's your pizza puke. I'm taking the kids. You deal with this mess."

The door swished open again, and she poked her head inside. The gloriously sickening and indefinable odor of kinetically exploded baby puke hit her nose and she gagged.

Gambit, clearly not a man to mop things up, was trying to eliminate the mess using his powers. "What is wrong with you! Everyone knows the best way to clean up puke is with Lysol and water!" Griffin screamed from behind her hand. Remy turned to face her, clothespin on his nose, face hidden behind a bandana.

"Remy don' know how to do dat, chere." He shrugged his shoulders and tried to look innocent.

Griffin sighed. "The kids are all cleaned up and waiting for some beds to sleep in. Tell the damn program to make exhaust vents, mops, and buckets with warm sudsy water." She leaned on the door as he started doing what she told him to. "I'll help you. And make sure we get rubber gloves."

***

In the meantime, Ice had finished washing off her small charges' hands & faces. She changed them into their pajamas and dragged them to the rec room. Trevor left with Logan to get many a pillow and sleeping bag. When they came back, Ice had all the kids glued to the TV, watching a tape of Disney's Tarzan. Logan smiled and looked at her, holding up the same double-sized sleeping bag they had broken in over and over and over again while on the camping trip. Ice gave him a cold smile and said, "You and Trevor will fit just fine in that, I'm sure."

Trevor swallowed and backed away, clearly nervous. "I'm not sleeping with you, dude. Gut me if you haveta, but that ain't happening." Logan growled at him.

Within an hour, the adults were all snoozing soundly on the couch, Trevor nervously separating the cross author from her pouting muse. The kids had either drifted off while watching David Letterman, or were starting to. They were all groggy. Especially since Melvin, the lizard-like leader of the three mutants in the trees, had leaked enough gas into the room to keep them all out for the next hour, except Logan. He had about five minutes with him there. All he needed was five minutes, and the kids were his. He carefully stepped into the room, pulled out a small box, and flipped a switch on it. With a flash of light, Lil' Wolvie, Sparkler, Sugah, Hawkey, Witchie and Lil' Quicksilver had vanished.

Then he closed the box and left, leaving Copycat at Logan's feet while the rest of them slept soundly.

Until the alarm went off, and Logan's claws were out before he had even stood all the way up.

***

"I just don’t get what the big problem is, Jean. So they trampled your flowers. They're just kids. They do shit like that." Scott sighed, placing his keys on the hooks near the door and taking off his soaked jacket. Jean flipped on a light in the living room.

"It's not so much that they-" she started, then stopped.

Her house. Was dirty. Was very, very dirty. Scott's jaw dropped. He had never seen such a mess, not even after he and Remy had held that stag party for Bobby's cousin while the women went out on a shopping spree.

She gawked at the mess. Before long, she wandered to the door of her bedroom and kicked it in, flipping the light on. Meatball sat up in bed and yelled obscenities at her.

Yezra blinked and sat up very groggy. "Wha…" she murmured.

Jean went white, pointing at Yezra. "Youuuuuuuuu!" she screeched. Scott covered his ears and winced. Nick sat up suddenly and blinked. "Why is it always you when a disaster strikes my life?!!"

"Don’t be a-scared mommy! I'll protect ya!" Meatball leapt from Yezra's arms and onto the floor, pulling out yet another squirt gun from who knows where, and aimed it at big Jean's big chest. Before she knew it, thick, sticky blueberry kool-aid was being squirted all over her new apricot-colored silk pantsuit. Jean looked on in horror and shock. Scott put a hand to his visor, not to shoot, but as a gesture of resignation.

Tink whimpered and grabbed at Nick's shirt, looking around, frantically.

All the other X-Babies were gone.

"Oh, fuck! The kids!" Yezra spat, tossing off the covers and standing up fast. She grabbed her head suddenly. Dizziness overtook her and she fell back down immediately, Nick catching her in time. "God, we didn’t have that much wine! I feel like I'm half-dead!"

Nick reached over and plucked a quill from her upper arm. "That's cuz you been drugged, babe, just like me." He pulled his own quill from the back of his neck.

Before Jean could start screaming again, the Mansion's alarms went off in the distance.

***

It took another 30 minutes of cleaning, but they worked as fast as they could, spraying disinfectant when done and then creating some holo-beds. While the storm outside began to unfurl, Remy turned the covers down and Griffin went to get the kids. It seemed that no sooner had she left, when she reappeared in the doorway, with a teary-eyed and frightened Captain Amerikid in her arms.

"The rest of them are gone! Amerikid says a purple-furred monster with lots of fingers stole them all and sucked them into a little box! Remy, what'll we do?!" Griffin's tears were real this time.

Gambit ran forward to a panel near the door. He punched in a code and hit a few buttons, and the mansion's alarms went off.

"Let’s go Chere, we got to get de others together."

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