Mortimer Toynbee's Electric Funkadelic Boogaloo

[x-penance.livejournal.com]

Yvette's birthday party at Silver. It's all fun and games until someone lets off a booby trap.



Laurie arrived at what she was sure would have been considered a fashionably late time, having had to do a comms rotation before she was allowed off to go to the party. They'd rented the VIP room at Silver for the night, and she grinned as she saw several people already out on the dance floor boogieing down to what seemed to be a dance remix of a PCIF recording.

"Happy Birthday, Hije," she said, tapping her friend on the shoulder.

Yvette jumped, as always startled by sudden contact, and carefully turned to see who it was, although the nickname was kind of telling. "You are making it, Laurie!" she exclaimed, pleased. "Thank for you coming! It is the very good party!" The smaller girl was obviously enjoying herself, her hair hanging in loose, wire-like curls down her back rather than the usual spikes.

"Wouldn't have missed it for the world," Laurie replied with a grin, already feeling the tension in her shoulders releasing as the beat of the music did its work. She really should get out more often, even if the profession she'd chosen required constant study. "Mind if I give you a birthday hug?"

If it had been anyone else, Laurie would've already hugged them but with Yvette it was always better to ask if it were contact beyond just a tap on the shoulder.

"Of course!" The hug was less enthusiastic than her words, but again, that was Yvette. Hugs without the right circumstances were tricky. "So many people came - I did not expect it."

"Hi Yvette! Laurie!" came Pixie's cheerful, sugary voice. "Ooo, a dance floor. Oh, ah, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to bring anything for the party but I made you this," she added as she came close. "It's a headband! It's all cool and textury, kinda like your skin." She handed Yvette the blue headband of hand-twisted, painted metal.

"Oh, it is beautiful! Thank you Megan!" Yvette replied, taking the gift and immediately putting it on. The blue matched the happy glow of her eyes perfectly. "How does it look?" she asked, posing a little.

"Very you," Laurie replied with a grin at the matching colours of eyes and headband. "Matches your eyes perfectly. Guess that means I should give you your present too."

She held out a small copper box to her friend, something she'd had made since she knew Yvette wouldn't be able to keep the normal sort of jewelry box.

"I should have the birthday more often," Yvette giggled as she opened the box. She beamed when she saw the pendant inside. "Oh, it is lovely, Laurie! Thank you!" fishing the necklace out of the box, she held it up. "Can you put it on for me? I cannot do the clasp so well."

Meanwhile...

It had been simple enough setting up the apparatus earlier in the day; the man known as Mister M had simply posed as someone from the gas company, inspecting things. Now, he and his new associate were sitting in a darker corner, watching the three girls.

"We could not gave asked for a better testing ground," he observed. "So many mutants and such a range of powers."

He sounded calm, but the little, balding man was sweating slightly, every so often chewing on a thumbnail. "Now?"

The other man nodded brusquely. "No, next Tuesday. Yes, now. Let's see how it works." Toad's tongue absently snapped out, catching a mosquito and he chewed and swallowed as he watched Mr M.

The other man gave him a sour look, but pulled out the remote. Toad was a means to an end, he reminded himself, his way into the Brotherhood. "I'm pretty sure this will work," he said. "I developed the prototype delivery system myself, in Prague. I think I've worked out why it exploded last time."

"You have? Oh, that's lovely. So much faith in you." Toad took a look outside. "Go!"

Mister M. glared at Toad again and slipped out of his chair. "Don't forget your mask," he said, before heading for the men's room. Once inside a cubicle, he slipped on his gas mask and pulled a cell phone out of his jacket pocket. The delivery system was voice activated - a few words spoken into the phone and aerosoled Kick was pouring into the air conditioning vents and spreading throughout the club.



The best laid plans aft gang awry... The aerosol Kick hits Laurie and Megan first and their powers have quite the unanticipated effect.



Pixie had started to sway slowly in place, feeling the beat of the music pumping from the dance floor.

"Is it wrong to like Lady Gaga?" She commented on the music. "Hey, we should go dance," she said to Yvette and Laurie. Lights sparkled in her pure-black eyes. She breathed in deeply and shivered. --it felt amazing. She looked up at the disco ball and saw little hearts and skulls spiraling off it in fractal-like patterns before they faded into dust.

"Wow, that's wicked. Do you guys see that?" Pixie giggled and spun around. "Oh hey, you even got a fog machine!"

A faint cloud of Pixie dust, not fog, swirled gently in the air currents in the room.

Laurie laughed, grabbing onto both Pixie's and Yvette's hands, pulling them out into the middle of the dance floor with her. "Come on you two, it's a birthday party and that means the birthday girl has to dance."

She didn't notice the light violet tinge beginning to show on her skin, too intent on the amazing feelings that had suddenly overtaken her. Everything looked amazing, all sparkly coloured and she laughed again without really knowing why. She just knew she was in a place she loved, with people she loved and what she really wanted to do most in the world was dance.

With her own laugh, Yvette let herself be pulled out onto the dance floor. Vaguely she remembered she didn't know how to dance and that she didn't like to be too close to people, but it was a brief thought, overwhelmed by the feeling of joy and happiness that was sweeping over her, the bright colours and spangled lights surrounding her. It was her birthday, and she loved everyone.

***

Kyle leaned across the bar, and gave the bartender a absurdly large grin. "No, more umbrellas, dude, I want umbrellas and skewered pineapple chunks. It'll be awesome." His attention wavered and he turned, watching Dori spin in a lazy circle, her tail making a bigger circle around her. It was so -neat- how she had a tail, and how it just was always behind her doing tail things, and wow, he'd noticed before but she had killer legs. And a tail.

He turned back to the bartender, who was building a small ziggurat out of cubed pineapple on top of the bar. "Dude, that is sweet. That is killer. You should totally like, put an umbrella on top of it." He watched as the bartender topped the construction with a precariously placed drink umbrella. "Dude, you are the best bartender ever. Did I tell you that already? Because you are."

There was, abruptly, a rustling noise from above Kyle's head and when he looked up, Kurt was hanging from a rafter grinning down at him. "You have pineapple", he observed. "I always liked pineapple."

Kyle could see a spade-ended tail swaying and he watched, fascinated for a good ten seconds before he realized it was Kurt! Kurt needed a tiki drink! He was up there and all the drinks were down with Kyle and his pineapple chunks. "Dude, you're all the way up there! That's like, really far, that's like all the way up there. But I should share. Sharing is awesome, I learned that like, when I was five and on Sesame Street and I should share. Wait, how am I gonna get up there?"

"... oh yes, you cannot teleport." Kurt gave the problem serious consideration. "You have feet. You could climb?"

"Dude. I totally have feet!" Kyle bent over nearly double to examine his feet for a few seconds, poking at one of his big toes. He stood up, grabbed at the bar as the room went spinning off around and above him and firmly planted one foot on the ground in an effort to try to stop the spinning. "I know, ladder!"

He stumbled off, wandering back towards the bathrooms and was gone for several minutes, finally returning with a stepstool and a plastic pail that he set on top of his head. "I am Ladderneto, master of ladders!" He said, laughing between words. "And um, tiki drink supremecy and um, pineapples for everyone!"

Kurt was swinging off the rafter by his feet by this time, but he had at least stayed in the same place. He joined the laughter happily. "Yay, a ladder. And now a tiki drink for me?"

"Tiki drinks for everyone!" Kyle handed one up, and then sat on the stepladder like it was a comfortable branch of a tree, one leg over each side. "Dude, you're very upside down. That's so cool."

***

Meggan wandered over from where she’d been dancing, giving the bartender a happy smile. “Do you have a little umbrella with the pineapple? I love little umbrellas, especially pink ones. I want two for my hair. No, no, three, that's a better number,” she requested. Instead of just dancing in place on the ground, once she had them in her hands, she began to execute a slow twirl through the air via levitation in perfect bliss, before coming back down. She wanted to keep dancing, but she wanted to float, so she would be attempting a compromise very soon.

The walls almost looked like they were on a slow spin cycle to her, all the colors of the rainbow, and so much love in the air. She felt wonderful, and wanted to go on a hugging spree for the rest of the night and beyond.

Artie smiled dreamily and sank down into a chair, uninterested in dancing right now. He began to project streams of colours and watched, hypnotised as they appeared to ripple backward and forth. A few of the other clubbers looked over and joined him, all of them staring at the streams of colour.

Jean-Phillipe was at one end of the bar, under an intake so as to spare those with enhanced senses, blowing smoke rings up into the vent where they disappeared. He looked remarkably mellow, the quiet tension that always pulled at the corners of his eyes gone. His sleeves were even up above his elbows, as he was feeling vaguely warm. Normally he would be somewhat irritated and vaguely confrontational about the burn scars on his forearms, but he was simply feeling too good to care at the moment.

Molly was on the dance floor with the other girls that were dancing. She was already normally pretty happy but today? It was the best day ever! She did her version of dancing, which looked pretty much like Dori and Meggan's version of dancing: spinning around in circles. But she also threw in some ballet (because she knew ballet), and did a few pirouettes, lifting her hands high above her head as she brought one leg up. Then the ballet eventually descended into just hopping about, and she giggled madly as she leap frogged into one of the booths, sprawling out on the seat as she watched the lights on the ceiling strobe on and off, her eyes wide.

"Awesome..." she said with a hushed whisper.

Matt wasn't one for dancing much normally, but he had let Molly drag him out onto the dance floor with very little resistance. In fact, he was quite okay with it. More than that, his head wasn't bothering him from all the noise and whatnot, he felt fantastic. In fact, he didn't want it to end as he headbanged and thrashed around very much out of time with the music. He didn't care about anything right now, he felt too good to care and he wanted it to last as long as possible. "Wahooo!" he yelled, still attempting to dance, cane thankfully folded up in his back pocket so he couldn't whack anyone.

Amara was similarly on the dancefloor, and had stayed out there a lot longer than she usually might. For once the press of people didn't bother her, nor the guys trying to get her attention. She was mostly ignoring them, her aura hotter than usual and the occasional lick of flame dripped from her hair as she spun. Where was John, she wondered. He should be here, dancing with her.

But she didn't move off the dancefloor to find him, instead just smiling at a guy who looked vaguely like him.

Sarah was enjoying herself, and even though she was one of the minors sporting a bracelet to prevent her from getting her underaged hands on any alcoholic beverages, it felt kind of cool to be hanging out in an actual bar. She'd felt a little nervous at first, never having been to one before, but once she got there it just felt right. That feeling increased over time, intensifying and getting stronger, until there was nowhere else on Earth she'd rather be than hanging out and dancing with her friends, whom she loved very much.

When the other girls headed for the dance floor, Sarah squealed and joined them even though dancing wasn't really her thing. It was Yvette's birthday, after all, and she loved her friend and everyone else and it was the best time ever, what better reason for dancing?

Callie squealed with delight, and flounced across the room, twirling around dancers until she reached the other end of the room. "It's so good to see you," she exclaimed, reaching her arms out for an embrace. "My dress?" She giggled while twirling so her skirt billowed around her. "Thank you. You look wonderful yourself this evening. Would you care to dance?"

The plant said nothing in reply.

***

In the middle of the room, Angel was holding court. Despite her love of her powers and her penchant for showing them off, she’d never shown off quite this much before – the fear of burning down a building was usually enough incentive to curb her desire to showboat. But she felt amazingly free of that fear as well as just feeling That Damned Awesome and so showboating it was. She’d seen enough movies to know roughly what kind of tricks fire eaters and others did and, of course, she could do them one better since she was generating her own fire and was immune to being burned to boot.

Grinning through the blue flames at her ever changing audience, she formed and conjured flames – small, she still had enough common sense to not set the roof on fire – and caused her fire shield to ripple over her body in interesting arcs. She was just letting out an arc of flame from her mouth and nose when she spotted the birthday girl.

“Yvette!” she called, waving frantically.

For her part, Yvette was looking relaxed. Literally – her hair was actually flowing and her fingers were half the length they normally were. “Angel!” she cried out enthusiastically, bouncing over to her Very Best Friend In All The World. “Isn’t this the best party ever?”

“Oh. My. God! You have no idea!” She paused and then started to giggle hysterically. “No, wait, that’s a total lie because you totally do since it’s your party!’”

Yvette joined in the giggling. “And everything is so pretty! And shiny! And I saw you with playing with your fire! That was so very amazing!”

At her friends words, Angel snapped her fingers and a tendril of fire burst into existence before tumbling over the back of her knuckles. After a moment, she slapped a hand over it and smoke whooshed out between her fingers. "It is so very amazing - and so are you, birthday girl! Tell me that you're having the total time of your life?!"

"Oh, very much! I do not remember having such a good time!" Yvette twirled around. "People are right - I need to relax more, especially if this is how it feels!"

"There's relaxing and then there's this!" She looked around at the room and suddenly sat down, hands over her mouth as she continued to giggle. "Look at everyone - I don't think I've seen folks this awesomely excited in, well, forever! I don't know if there's something in the punch or if we all just needed to let go but this is awesome!"

"I know!" Yvette twirled around some more and then suddenly stopped and reached for Angel's hand. "Come on! Come and dance with me!" she declared. "It is a rule! Everyone has to dance with the birthday girl!"

Bracing her legs, Angel let herself be yanked up off the floor by Yvette. "I totally didn't know that was a rule but I highly approve!" It was kind of amazing how different Yvette's hand felt in hers. The birthday girl was still wearing her gloves but there was a noticeable difference as Angel gripped her hand. She didn't think she'd ever felt or seen Yvette that relaxed looking outside of the few times her powers had been disrupted.

"The birthday girl gets to make the rules," Yvette replied, laughing. "Come on!"

***

This wasn't right. In contrast to all the happy, laughing, dancing people around him, Toad was pushing his way through the crowds, glaring at them over the top of his mask. Where were the explosions? The panic? The mutant-on-mutant violence that would get news coverage and further inflame flatscan-mutant politics? Where, in the words of the classic Warner Brothers cartoon, was his earth shattering kaboom?

"Hello!" A small red girl appeared in front of him, blue eyes blazing brightly and a big smile on her face. "I am the birthday girl! And you have not had a hug yet!"

"A what? No, wait, don't..." Toad tried to push the girl away, but she was already too close. She went up on tip toes and hugged him tightly, her strangely-rough cheek rubbing against the straps of his facemask.

"There! Everyone must have a hug!" she declared as she let him go and disappeared into the crowd. Toad muttered darkly to himself as he rubbed at his ear - it felt like someone had rubbed it with sandpaper.

"Fucking hippies. Just wait until I get my hands on that Mister M..." he began, and then froze as the strap of his face mask snapped in two, leaving it to dangle off his ear. "Aw, crap."

It didn't take long for the combined pheromone-pixie dust mix in the air to work its magic. A minute later, Toad was literally bouncing off the walls.



Healing factors kick in, leaving Kyle and Laura to raise the alarm.




Kyle felt... weird. Part of that was that he had little pieces of pineapple pulp between his teeth, and he just couldn't quite remember why the hell he'd been so obsessed with pineapples. More alarmingly, he wasn't sure how much he'd eaten. Even more alarmingly, he had a good half a dozen tiny paper umbrellas tucked behind his ear, and his cash had run out. Which meant he'd drunk himself to cashlessness and to forgetfulness in under six drinks. That wasn't right, he'd put away at least a dozen with Wade a few nights before with only minimal effects.

He stumbled - another point of worry - out of the men's bathroom, disposed the umbrellas in a trashcan, and came to a confused halt. That... was a lot of very huggy dancing on the dance floor, Yvette included, which was most definitely -abnormal-, and there was an odd combination of smells. Cotton candy, and vinegar and... swamp water and farts.

On the far side of the floor he could see Laura, who seemed to him to be a little less huggy than everyone else, and he made a path towards her, skirting wide around the dance floor. Which took way more time than he'd expected, being nearly ambushed by his own distraction - Dori really liked short skirts, wow. "Hey, do you smell anything weird?"

Laura looked back, still trying to get her hair in perfect condition, as well as waving a hand in a futile attempt to get some fresh air on her. "I've been smelling something really...intense as of late." She had also made a couple of friends...and for a second played with the idea of go over the girls dancing...but fortunately whatever had hit her was now out of her system. "I'm guessing someone is releasing a little too much Pixie dust...but it's not only that, I think?"

"Right, whatever it is, it is like, seriously... not cool. Gonna call in, cause, you know, uncoolness." Kyle had to fumble for his phone a few times, and it took actual concentration to dial back to the mansion to tell them something, and he wasn't sure what, was up and that he was almost kinda sort positive but not really sure that he smelled Toadfeet.