FicWad

Author's note: Another one of the unrealistically written chapters. Please understand that I was VERY young when I first wrote it and I figured if I didn't know what a swear word was, Lance wouldn't either. -.- Yeah. You'll see the issue as soon as you get to it. I hope the mistake of my young mind will provide amusement.

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“Why are yah here, again?” Marie asked John in exasperation.

“Well, that’s a good question,” John said, tapping the eraser on the booth top in The Wolverine, “Some people say that God took seven days, and voila! The human race was born. Others hold that it was all a soup in the beginning, and it slowly evolved into semi intelligent life.”

“Why do Ah even bothah?” Rogue asked the ceiling.

“Hey, Exie, which do you think: Darwinism, or creationism?” John yelled at the girl who was currently balancing five bowls of beer nuts and pretzels in both arms.

“I don’t think about it,” she growled, dumping three of the bowls into John’s unsuspecting hands. “Place those at even intervals around the bar.”

It was an hour before six o’clock, the bar’s official opening time, but Rogue had been feeling in the mood to see her family, and it did make a good place to write. She still wondered why John was here. He seemed to have followed her all the way from school, and he had been asking inane questions. The omnipresent note book was out, of course, and he had been jotting things down again.

Exie was trying to get everything ready for tonight and muttering things about how rocker boy should be here, even though Logan had reminded her that they had advertised it as a six to midnight job. Exie just grumbled some more. She seemed to be trying to do everything at once, with Rogue helping out where she could, John happily debating random topics with whoever would listen, and artfully dodging any attempts made by Exie to make him useful.

John was probably about to weasel his way out of the job, or get Marie to do it for him, but Lance walked in at the moment. He looked around, spotted Marie, and went slightly red, although it was hard to tell in the gloom.

She looked at him and glared, pushing John and the beer nuts toward the bar.

Lance rubbed the back of his head in a nervous way.

“Well,” Rogue got tired of waiting, “Are yah goin’ tah say it or not? Yes, Ah brought John here again. Yah have a problem with that?”

“Um, not really,” Lance lied, but remembering the decision that the others had come to at The Backs. “Todd’s been sorta on my case, so ‘m sorry ‘bout yellin’ at you.” He mumbled.

“Yeah, well,” Rogue looked at the ground and rubbed her arm in an embarrassed way.

Exie walked up with a broom and thrust it into Lance’s hands, “Yeah, well, now that you’re here make yourself useful and start sweeping.” She told him tartly.

Logan chuckled from behind the bar as he polished pint glasses. John, who was positioning the beer nuts just so, and trying to make Exie think he was actually being useful, snorted. Rogue patted Lance on the shoulder and then went behind the bar to help Logan with the glass polishing. Exie just stalked off to check that they had enough beer on tap. As she passed John she thrust a rag into his hands.

“Wipe off the tables.” She told him shortly.

After she was certain that they had enough of everything she looked around, checking everything that needed to be done off on a mental list. Tables cleaned, check. Glasses cleaned, check. Floor cleaned, check. Beer on tap, check. Beer nuts placed around the bar, check. Pretzels in place, check. Moving the days deliveries into the storeroom, che-- no, damn.

Exie uncrossed her arms and stalked into the store room. The dark cool room was also used as the back way into the bar. They had the deliveries placed by the back door, and it minimized the effort and amount of heavy box carrying that had to be done. An efficient design, and Exie approved of efficiency. She sighed as she opened the back door and began to move the boxes that today’s shipment of bottled beer had come in into the cool store room.

John twisted the rag in his hand. He personally thought that the table tops looked clean enough to him. Of course, he wasn’t really very good at keeping rooms clean, just look at his own, and wiping tables was such dull work. John looked imploringly toward Marie who shook her head, but Logan walked around the bar to take the rag from John’s hand.

“I’ll do it, Kangaroo.” He growled, pushing John down into a seat.

The notebook materialized and John started scribbling furiously. He just wasn’t cut out for heavy lifting types of work. So he tried to look just as industrious as the rest of the people here. When Exie came out of the back room her idleness scanner would hopefully skip right over him.

In the five minutes that it took Exie to finish putting the supplies away Logan wiped down fifteen of the sixteen booths, and all of the tables and chairs scattered about the place. He was working on the last booth, and ready to give the bar a final rub down when she came back out of the store room carrying two more bowls of pretzels.

If it were not for the handy intervention of Lance the pretzels would have scattered all over the floor. However, he managed to catch them as they dropped from Exie’s nerveless grasp, without one of the salty sticks falling from its bowl.

“What are you doing Logan?” Exie asked.

“Wipin’ the tables so’s the customers can use ‘em,” He replied calmly.

“But I told John to do that.” Here she gave the Aussie a murderous glare, which promised pain later. “Go back to finishing off the glasses; I can take care of the wiping.”

“Almost done,” Logan still seemed calm, but John noticed that the knuckles griping the rag had gone white, “Marie, you waitressing, or was this a social call?”

“Social,” Rogue responded, “Ah need a booth for writing purposes, an’ Irene expects me back bah seven. She wants tah make a real surprise for dinnah. Ah kin smell th’ jambalayah from here.”

“Well, if you want a private booth writer boy can occupy one, and as soon as you check the pool table you can join him,” Logan stated, ignoring Exie’s angry glares in John’s direction.

“Whah ever for should Ah check th’ pool table?” Rogue looked amazed, “Creed an’ Marvel Lady usually don’ mind if a ball is missing.”

“Tom’s in town again,” Logan pointed out succinctly, “If one Cassidy enters a bar another will soon follow. I’m expecting a grudge match of pool tonight.” He chuckled.

“Ah’d better check th’ cues as well, then.” Rogue decided as she walked over to the pool table. “We can’t have drunk Irishmen claimin’ that th’ game was a set up because one pool cue broke.”

John snuck into the booth underneath the watchful glare of Exie as Rogue and Logan talked. He hunched down, hoping that Exie would forget him as she went about her business, and wondering what the chill factor had gone to absolute zero when Exie had seen that he had convinced Logan to do his job. Pulling out the notebook he wrote down the names from his list on one sheet of paper.

Rogue slid into the booth a few minutes later.

John looked up, only to be met by Exie’s scowl as she was passing from the front door to the bar with another box in her arms. He then turned to Rogue who was wearing an identical scowl, although it seemed to be directed at the universe in general, and not him in particular. John felt very grateful for this.

“What’s with your sis? She looks like she wants to skewer me.” John shivered.

“Exie’s got a morbid view of mortality.” Rogue sighed, “Ah think that she’s tryin’ tah get Logan tah stop doin’ so much. If yah haven’t noticed she does most o’ the work here. That was how she convinced Logan tah hire Lance, she said that she needed the break, but Ah notice that Logan’s extra stuff is what Lance is doin’ now.” Rogue found an empty beer nut bowl and began to play with it.

“So, Exie’s just being over protective. When she disembowels me that’ll make me feel so much better.” John commented as he began to tear the paper up into strips.

Rogue glanced at him sharply, he was doing that thing where he sounded totally sincere, but there was no way that he could be happy at this turn of events. “Yah know what Ah hate about yah, Sin Jin?”

“My lack of knowledge about trees?” John shrugged.

“Ah kin nevah tell when yah bein’ sarcastic.”

John looked at her as if Rogue had just said she didn’t know what one plus one equaled.

“It’s quite simple, shiela, y’can tell from m’tone of voice. And I add in the occasional rolling of the eyes.”

“Rahght.” Rogue said sarcastically.

“See, that’s perfect.” John commented cheerily, “By the way, what was that whole thing with the pool table ritual?”

“Huh,” Rogue laughed, more sarcasm, although John did not point this out, “Yah know the shop an’ Auto class teacher, Mr. Cassidy? He’s got this cousin who’s sort of the black sheep of the family. Nahce enough guys, but yah get ‘em in the same room an’ they try tah kill each other. Unfortunately for us, the same room happens tah be the bar because Logan goes way back with Mr. Cassidy, an’ he hasn’t ever thrown Tom out, no matter how intelligent that action may be. Don’t worry; we’ll probably be gone before they come. What yah doin’?”

Rogue pointed to the strips of paper.

“Oh, well, we need t’work on the story, right? I was thinking that with this chapter we should add a few more characters. I like the idea of choosing people at random, so I thought that we could draw names out of a beer nut bowl. Or something.”

“’Kay,” Rogue said, putting the bowl down and filling it with the paper scraps. “So, Ah’ll pick the names out an’ we use them. Just one question, how many new characters are we usin’?”

“Whoa, whoever said anything about you picking out the names?” John asked crossly.

“Excuse me?” Rogue looked at him, slightly astonished by his out cry.

“Well, you’ve been pickin’ all of the names an’ choosin’ characters all over the place,” John pointed out. “I thought that maybe it should be my turn.”

“But, this is mah story—,” Rogue trailed off at the look on her “partner’s” face. “Fahne,” she said throwing her hands in the air, “yah can choose one.”

“And y’can choose one as well,” John said, his good humor returning like the sun from behind a cloud. “That way we can introduce the characters slowly and build up to the climax by usin’ the tension created between the different personalities.”

“Who said that there would be tension?” Rogue bristled at John’s smug, all knowing manner. “We could pick both Betsy an’ Kitty. Those two live in the same house, and they seem tah lahke each othah well ‘nough.”

“Y’obviously haven’t tried to hang around the Academy on a Saturday afternoon then.” John pointed out dryly. “It starts out with: ‘Kitty, stop banging on that typewriter!’ Five minutes later music begins to blast and it’s all: ‘Betsy if you don’t turn that garbage off I’ll destroy your boom box!’ It goes down hill from there.”

“Not much of a story,” Rogue yawned, her gloved hands dipping dangerously close to the bowl with the names.

“Look, all I’m saying is that if we pick two people who happen to be on the same side, so to speak, we can have the chapter be about the conflicts of their personalities, and not a life or death battle over getting someone on the team.”

“Ah lahke life or death battles,” Marie muttered mutinously.

However she dipped her hand into the bowl and pulled out a name when John did. Like it was an ancient ritual the two teens carefully handed the slips of paper they had drawn to each other, not opening them. Then they opened the papers so that the name faced the writer across the booth.

“Katharine Pryde,” John muttered as he read the paper between Marie’s fingers.

“Lance Alvers,” she replied.

“One life and death battle coming up,” John grimaced.

At that moment the door to The Wolverine burst open and an angry Betsy strode up to Lance. The stocky boy held the broom like a shield between him and the furious girl. Betsy looked like she was about to spit knives, her eyes seemed to glow yellow in the bad lighting, and her teeth were bared in a snarl that would have made Creed proud.

“You!” she yelled pushing Lance back a step, “You have a lot of nerve doing that to her! I thought that you cared about her but obviously you are nothing but a cheap dirty bully! You friggin’ cunt! You bleedin’ wanker! You—you—you piece of white trash!”

Betsy brought her fist up, ready to give Lance’s jaw a love tap when someone grabbed her arm. The Brit tried to wrench it free, but the grip was like stone, and when Betsy struggled it tightened like a vice. She whirled around to look down into Exie’s hot eyes.

“Explain why you are attacking my employee.” Logan growled from behind the bar. He had a shot gun balanced nonchalantly in the crook of his arm.

“He beat up my roommate,” Betsy answered, matching growl for growl.

“I what?” Lance asked, thoroughly confused by Betsy’s attack, and the word cunt, which was not in his vocabulary.

“You beat up Kitty!” the purple Goth rounded on him, “Er, you did, didn’t you?” she asked after seeing his mystified expression.

“No,” Lance told her in absolute refusal. He stiffened as the words hit home, “Who attacked Kitty!” he grabbed Betsy and began to shake her by the shoulders.

The poor girl was still being held by Exie. Her arm had begun to lose some feeling in it, and now her head was snapping back and forth. It was at this moment that Marie decided to step in and end the soap opera.

“Lance, let go, Bets can’t tell yah anythin’ if she doesn’t have any teeth left. Exie, Logan, s’alrahght, the soap opera will move back tah the booth now.”

The shot gun was already back under the bar, next to the till, where it belonged. Exie let go, but gave Betsy a look which made the ones that she had been shooting at John pale in comparison. Marie led her friend over to the booth, and plunked her down beside John, who generously scooted over. Lance followed, his fists clenched, and fury written in the set of his shoulders.

“Yah mahnd explainin’ what this is all about?” Rogue asked, her arms crossed.

“Kitty came home all bruised up, and when we asked her what happened she told us that she fell walking from the school t’the auditorium. I saw you walking her there,” Betsy looked at Lance. “Everyone knows you have a crush on Kitty and an awful temper, and we all were there for the ‘I love Piotr’ section of chemistry.”

“And so you thought I beat Kitty up, ‘cause I’m a jealous hood,” Lance finished for her, earning the Allerdyce award for exasperated sarcasm. “Yeesh, who needs enemies?”

“Hood?” John asked Betsy cluelessly.

“It’s American slang. It means delinquent. Who knows why, they’re weird over here.” The Brit informed the hapless Aussie.

“Hey, at least it’s not as bad as--,” Lance paused, “What’s that stupid thing that the British say?” he asked Marie.

“Almost anythin’ that come out of their mouths,” Rogue told him, “But that’s not the point. If Lance didn’t attack Kitty, who did?”

“Maximoff?” Betsy shrugged.

“Hey, look,” Rogue was beginning to get fed up with this constant assumption by everyone, “Can we fahnd suspects who aren’t mah friends? Anyway, ‘Tro wouldn’t evah touch the Kit-kat bar ‘cause Lance would stomp him if he tried.”

“We could follow her around all day,” John proposed, “We were going to have to do it anyway, why not kill two birds with one stone?”

“Uh, stalker much?” Betsy suggested, then she re-ran what John had just suggested through her head. “Wait, what didja mean ‘we were going to have to do it anyway?’”

“It’s for the English project we’re doin’,” Rogue reassured her.

“Why do you think following her around would work?” Lance asked, incredulously.

“’Cause, if she was beat up once, it’ll likely happen again,” John told the tough boy, “With Kitty’s brains it’s probably someone who isn’t head of the calculus class because of her. IQ is always punished.”

“Oh yeah, like brainiacs have it so b--,” Exie tossed an apron into Lance’s face just as Rogue stiffened at the familiar roar of a motorcycle.

“Creed’s here,” Rogue hissed darkly, and fished around in her back pack for some playing cards. “Well, Ah don’t know ‘bout yah two, but Ah’ve gotta wait anothah hour ‘fore Ah can go home. Anybody up for a round of BS?”

“I should probably be going back to the Academy,” Betsy sighed.

“An’ I don’t know how to play,” John shrugged.

“Really, you don’t know luv?” Betsy began to grin with evil intent, “I think that I can stay for a round or two.”

Marie began to deal out the cards as Betsy gave a convoluted explanation of the rules to John. About half way through the dealing, the door swung open and Creed walked in. He looked around, saw the teens and muttered something about the neighborhood going to the dogs. He then stalked over to the bar and sat walked around it several times before choosing the same stool that he had sat in for the last twenty years.

Betsy broke off in the middle of explaining why John should bet money on the out come of the games. She hadn’t been getting very far in her conversation, anyway.

“Whoa, who’s tall, tan, and hairy?” She whispered to Marie.

“Creed,” the girl bit off shortly.

“Huh, he looks like he eats road kill. I didn’t know that this place was licensed to serve pets.” Betsy giggled.

“Unfortunately we are,” Marie grumbled.

Creed growled from his bar stool, where he sat, waiting impatiently for a beer. Logan filled the pint glass and slid it over to him. Almost immediately the door opened and Captain Rogers, followed by Lieutenant Carter trooped in, seven other police officers following in their wake. They all ordered, and soon Exie was flying back and forth between the drinks appeared. The door opened yet and Ms. Danvers strode in, her back straight as a ramrod, and ice white hair in a mathematically precise bun.

“Thought that you would be here laddy buck,” She walked over to Creed, “You owe me twenty dollars from last night’s game.”

“Did she just say laddy buck?” a British voice from an occupied booth whispered and there was a round of teenaged snickers before everyone was silent, ready to watch the proceedings.

“And you still owe me fifty from last week,” He drawled, taking a gulp from his pint glass.
“If we’re keeping tabs on everything that we owe each other, you owe me another forty dollars from August.” She informed him tartly.

“How ‘bout we settle this in the time honored tradition?” Creed was already moving from his bar stool to the pool table.

“Agreed,” Carol Danvers picked up a pool cue.

The light began draining from the sky, as more customers came in. Rogue watched her surroundings, noticing the little melodramas that were enacted, and wondering why these people did what they did. Feeling in a philosophical mood she tried to capture everything about this scene. There was a pattern to the way the people interacted with one another in the smoky bar.
Cops coming in, just off their shifts, were the easiest to tell. They walked in like ghosts, somber and quiet, buying large amounts of beer, or in the cases of the ones who had finally admitted to themselves that they had problems, they bought large amounts of juice and soda. They would sit in the corners of the room, not talking, wincing at every loud noise, and drinking long and deep. Marie wondered if they ever really did lose their memories of what had happened. Could they bury their lives with just a few drinks?

Of course, this contemplation did mean that she wasn’t paying much attention to the game, which had switched to poker without her noticing. It wasn’t until Moonstar’s quiet granddaughter collected the money at the center of the table with a royal flush that Marie even realized that she had just lost twenty dollars.

“Card sharper,” John muttered as he watched his five dollar bill disappear into the fourteen year-old’s jean pockets.

“At least you didn’t lose thirty four dollars,” Betsy grumbled, glaring at her full house.
Danielle smiled winningly, “At least you can now feel proud that you have donated to a member of an ethnic minority’s motorcycle fund.”

“Ooh, what are you thinking about getting?” Rogue asked, the light of car happiness dancing in her eyes.

Both John and Betsy were left in the dust as the conversation took off, the two girls talking about things like “makes” and “horse power.” Exie stopped by the booth, too, and they were all treated on a lecture about chrome. Apparently Exie’s contribution was very controversial, as Rogue began to pull her points apart with venom.

“It must be an American thing,” Betsy and John agreed after watching the girls without saying anything for ten minutes.

The argument was cut short as the door was thrown open and two new customers walked into the bar, arguing at high speed in Irish brogue. Exie’s trouble radar went into over load and Lance was so surprised at the second customer he almost dropped a glass that he was handing to Logan.

John looked up, curious to see why Exie was so on edge. Walking toward Logan were two men, who were about as similar as day and night. One John recognized as being that guy he had seen around school. His reddish brown hair caught the light in such a way that it turned golden. Unlike his companion, this man was slightly unkempt, with a three day growth on his face, and the hair, no matter how golden, had obviously not been brushed. There were oil stains on his hands, and the sweater that he wore over his t-shirt was unraveling at the elbows. However, this only added to the aura of solid competence that he seemed to exude.

“Is that Mr. Cassidy?” Betsy asked, blinking at the tall man.

Marie nodded matter-of-factly, and began to put her cards away, as Dani looked at the two men with curiosity.

The other Irishman was just as tall as Mr. Cassidy, but slimmer. Instead of reliable strength this man seemed to be built along more wiry lines. However, there obviously were muscles underneath the black shirt, and leather jacket. This stranger seemed to be as neat as Mr. Cassidy was disheveled. Every black hair was neatly combed back from his face, and the goatee and mustache that framed his sardonic mouth would have passed inspection with flying colors.

“I’m simply saying, Sean, that Theresa is doing perfectly well being home schooled.” The dark man’s black eyes were snapping with anger.

“I dinnea mean tha’ yea were doing a bad job Tom,” Sean rounded on his cousin with annoyance plainly showing on his face. “I just think tha’ mea daughter should be with children o’ her own age.”

“First that Frost bitch and now you!” Tom exclaimed, “Theresa doesn’t need to be with children of her own age. She can hold her own in an argument with people twice her age. Or don’t you remember the last time you tried to get her enrolled in a public school? She came running home crying because no one wanted to discus the reasons Socrates was killed with her.”

“Logan, give us a beer,” Sean said glaring daggers at Tom.

“I’ll get our table ready.” The neat Irishman said, walking up to where Creed and Carol Danvers were playing pool.

“This is our cue to exit,” Marie said to John and Betsy as there was a snarl from Creed.

“Aww, do we have to? I want to see the end of this.” Betsy whined watching the two men with a grin on her face.

John shrugged, he wasn’t all that keen on getting caught in the middle of another crossfire. One a week was enough for him. He tried to squeeze past Betsy, only to end up sprawled across her lap because he tripped over his own backpack.

“Aw, didn’t know you were so attracted to me, luv,” Betsy grinned at John’s embarrassment and then let him pass.

“C’mon, Ah smell the jambalaya waitin’,” Marie pulled Betsy up, and the three friends headed out the door.