Fictive Hank McCoy landed neatly on the desk. He looked his Writer straight in the eye and cleared his throat demanding attention. "My dear Reccea," he began, "do you realize how disconcerting it must be for myself to hold my tongue while you allow conversations about alcohol and nookie to progress daily?"

"I don't allow the conversations to happen. They just happen." Reccea frowned. "Would it help if I apologized profusely?"

"By all means if you feel compelled to do so, but I must point out that as I converse with you the problem is now solved. You have found my voice, so to speak."

Um," she bit her lip. "The thing is you found your voice. I have not. Your voice runs away from me, which is why we have a problem."

"So what you're saying is that you relate better to reformed drug addicts and angst worthy souls than brilliant souls such as myself?"

"No!" She looked a little panicked. "Rather, you're too good, too intelligent for me. Your witty banter and incredible knowledge is simply beyond me. You're too good for me Hank."

"I don't think we've ever been in a relationship, so the condolences should not be necessary."

To which her reply was silence. For a long while. And then, finally "You're in one of those moods. Aren't you?"

"As this is one of the few times I'm able to talk, wouldn't you agree that I must take advantage of the opportunity?"

"A simple yes woulda been fine."

"Truly?" Hank approximated surprise. "I would have thought, given our distressing lack of prior conversation, you would be delighted to listen to all I have to say. In fact, one might have come to conclusion that you might view this singular conversation as inspiration. "

"Okay, now you're picking on me."

"Go Hank!" Iceman exclaimed as he ice pillared up to the desk. Reccea turned to glare at him. However her glare was cut short, Bobby was obviously channeling some icon-esque clothes. Leather looked good.

"Have you been looking at the new X-Men comics?" She questioned warily.

"Can we not talk about those?" Hank asked quietly. He was not now, nor would he ever be, Cat Hank.

"What?" Bobby shrugged. "Warren likes my look in the new ones."

"Warren likes anything. Remember that awful purple and gray suit? But we digress." Hank turned back and stared at Reccea, obvious from his stance that he would continue to do so until she apologized, or wrote, or went down on her knees to beg his pardon. It was a cold hard stalemate that would not be broken by speech. A test of will.

"Digress from what?" Bobby asked. Silence had reigned for two seconds.

"I'm sorry!" Reccea pleaded.

Hank looked unmoved.

"Okay. So what, we're ignoring me now?" Bobby looked non-plussed.

"A moment if you please Robert."

Bobby huffed but turned, amusing himself with snow balls and ice sculptures in the shape of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Distracted, both Reccea and Hank looked at the ice oddities, looked at each other, then shrugged.

"You were saying, Hank?" Reccea prompted.

"Ah... right!"

"Hank!" Warren's voice came from above. "You're talking!"

Reccea and Hank looked at Warren, who was circling above them lazily. "Indeed," Hank agreed.

"That's great," Warren landed next to Bobby. "I didn't think she'd ever get you talking again."

Reccea bit her lip unhappily.

"We have yet to ascertain how long it will last. Unless the lady would care to give me an answer."

"Can I start talking yet?" Bobby whined.

"Why can't you talk?" Warren arched an eyebrow. He got a good look at Bobby's clothes and smiled. "Nice outfit."

"It isn't my fault," Reccea protested quietly. "I like you Hank. I want you to talk. I just..." she trailed off.

"I see," Hank looked unimpressed with this reply. "I find your response unacceptable and am awaiting an alternative."

"I don't know how!" Reccea pleaded.

"But if you hum a few bars..." Bobby added.

"My fictives have a habit of turning against me," she grumbled to herself.

"Well you slash us," Warren grinned as he glanced at Bobby. "Fair trade."

"I like being slashed," Bobby replied. "Well except for the angst."

"I like talking," Hank grumbled.

"I already said I was sorry," Reccea grumbled.

"Why are you sorry?" Bobby asked.

"Because it is her fault that I have been silent ever since I have emerged as a fictive. Since that time, she has not seen it fit to write me a substantial part of substantial dialogue, so much so, that she has not given me enough autonomy to speak on my own. Until now that is, and I am taking the opportunity to literally voice my displeasure."

"Oh." Bobby's expression was blank.

"She couldn't think of anything for him to say, so Hank was mute," Warren whispered in Bobby's ear.

"I didn't do it on purpose!"

"But you didn't remedy it either."

Reccea sighed, knowing that no matter what she said or whatever regret she expressed would not be enough to soothe Hank's displeasure. She mimicked him, steepling her fingers. "Okay, so how can I make it up to you?"

"I want a story," Hank announced. "Where I'm straight, capable of talking, and have... fun."

"When have I ever slashed you," Reccea retorted defensively.

"You've managed to slash everyone else," Hank replied dryly. "I thought it was a just precaution."

"And we still don't get nookie!" Bobby whined.

"I don't want nookie!" Hank grumped.

"At least someone doesn't," Reccea muttered.

"So," Bobby climbed up to the keyboard, "does Hank get Twinkies?"

"Twinkies I could manage," Reccea brightened considerably.

"And no Trish Tilby?" Warren countered.

"She had blue hair," Bobby commented.

"Only when the colorist was having a bad day, alas." Hank replied. "Perhaps Cecilia?"

"The X-man who didn't exist?" Reccea arched an eyebrow.

"A far too short an acquaintance indeed," Hank lamented.

"Far too long if you ask me," said Warren.

"She was witty, intelligent, a fellow lover of the science and of the practices of Hippocracies. She understood advanced bimolecular theory."

Bobby saw the strange look that had surfaced upon his best friend's face. "She called you a Muppet," Bobby added.

"And she knew the periodic table," Hank added wistfully.

"You have really horrible taste in women." Warren shook his head.

Hank frowned slightly. "All three of us seem to have gone out of our way to attract the most persnickety of females."

"Muppet!" Bobby repeated.

"Opal!" Warren shot back.

Everyone cringed.

"I would like to state, for the record," Bobby replied, "that Reccea has never paired me with Opal. So you can take your Opal mockery and shove it."

"Now now, Robert," Hank tried to soothe, "ex-girlfriends are nothing to get violent about."

"It was Opal!" the Warren fictive repeated, stamping his foot at the ground.

Hank gave his feathered friend a calculated look. "You're jealous."

"No I'm not!" Warren snapped.

"Oh." Reccea studied her Warren fictive. "Oh yes, you are."

Bobby grinned. "I am so the man," he gloated. His face fell when Hank and Warren started to laugh at him. "I don't like you guys anymore."

"You sound like me," Reccea pet Bobby's hair. "But Warren is jealous."

"Well Warren needs to apologize for laughing at me. And so does Hank. Or I'll never talk to them again." Bobby folded his arms.

But neither Warren nor Hank were immediately forthcoming in their apologies, mostly in part that in about twenty minutes Bobby would forget he wasn't talking to them and would start talking to him. Besides, Hank still had his unfinished staring contest.

Bobby sighed and looked at his Writer. "Why do you have such mean fictives."

"I ask myself that all the time."

"And you are so fortunate as to have a voice with which you may ask yourself questions at any hour of the day."

"Or night," Warren added.

"Or night," Hank amended.

"Oh for the love of God!" Reccea threw her hands up in the air.

Bobby patted his Writer's head lovingly. After all, she wrote about him. She had several stories, finished or no, about him on her hard drive. And okay yeah, so she slashed him. But she slashed everyone. And he could be picky, or he just might end up mute.

And she saved him from Opal. Reccea was the bomb diggity. And... Bobby did something completely out of fictive or comic book character. He walked up to Henry McCoy and tapped him on the chest. "No picking on my Writer blue boy."

Hank and Warren and Reccea gaped. Warren floated up to Reccea's eye level. "What are you doing to your poor fictives!?!?"

"Nothing. He just happens to actually like me." She folded her arms. "And you should too Mr. Worthington. You get nookie, after all. Even if it is off screen."

Warren looked at her critically. "Hank and Bobby don't argue. It's not right."

"Yes well... okay you have a point." She pursed her lips.

"I know," Warren folded his arms knowingly.

"Robert, I was not insulating the muse of your favor on purpose, I was only pointing out her predilection to procrastination as well as her indecisive and contrary tendencies in her work as well as her planning and her frustrating insistence that fictives such as yours truly stay silent thus perpetuating the evil..."

Bobby had gone cross-eyed.

So had Reccea.

Warren, however, seemed to understand most of it. "Recce, you're such a slacker."

"I know," she admitted, hiding her face in her hands.

"Perhaps..." Bobby trailed off thoughtfully.

"Yes, Robert?" Hank prompted.

"Maybe if we could a way to cure her slackerness, you wouldn't be mute!"

Warren started laughing. Quite loudly. And he didn't seem to be able to stop. "Good luck!" he choked between gasps.

"I have an idea my finely feathered friend. If her creative interests were limited then there is a good possibility that us poor neglected mutants would be able to steal the spotlight from her other fictives and thus insuring that I maintain my level of speech for the impending season."

"Err..."

"We kidnap the fictive she likes the best."

"Hey. Hey hey." Reccea interrupted. "I object."

"So?" Warren smirked.

"What if one of you is my favorite fictive?" She folded her arms.

"We'd laugh, but then we'd be insulting ourselves," Warren stated.

"Precisely," Hank added, "so we'll just guwaff and say, 'Yeah right!'"

"You don't know that!" she protested.

"Oh yes we do." Warren folded his arms.

"You do like Roy best..." Bobby looked a little hurt.

"Oh please." Reccea looked at her Iceman. "I have more unfinished fics with you than with anyone else. And you know it."

Bobby ice platformed up to Reccea's eye level. "Oh yeah," he sneered, trying to be intimidating, "But how many posted stories am I in?"

"Uh... I... I mean.... crap." Reccea looked completely guilty.

"Kidnap?" Bobby asked Warren and Hank.

"Kidnap," they said with determination.

"No!" Reccea protested. "No, no, no, no." She moved to block the door, fear in her eyes.

"It is far too late for pleas, my good woman," Hank admonished. "You should have given our situation some thought prior to the escalation of our temperaments from mild to livid."

"Yeah," Bobby added, "you shoulda thought of that before hand!"

"Guys!" Reccea looked panicked. "Come on! This isn't funny!"

"Not to you, maybe" Warren smirked.

"You're not helping," Reccea shot back at him. The tiny mutant laughed and flew higher into the air.

"Shall we?" Hank gestured to the door.

"Oh yeah." Bobby grinned.

"Let's go!" Warren shouted from above.

And they slipped past Reccea.

"So Blue, where are we headed?"

"What an excellent and precise question Mr. Drake."

"You don't know, do you?" Warren added.

"I have the vaguest impression."

"That's a no," Bobby commented.

"Lucky for you guys I know my way around." Warren smirked.

"Being capable of being airborne does provide you with certain information that the rest of us do not have."

"Well?" Bobby prompted. "Where are the Guinness freaks?"

"They have their spots where they like to slum," Warren commented.

"Yep!" Bobby agreed. "They think they're too cool for the fort of evil socks."

"They're not the only ones," Hank said softly.

"Well where do they hang?" Either Bobby was ignoring Hank's comment or he didn't hear it. Either option was possible.

"The top shelves of Reccea's closet." Warren turned towards their Writer's bedroom. "The one she can't reach. So she can't 'disturb' them."

"Oooooh." Bobby nodded. "Wait." He threw a critical glance at Warren. "How do you know that, but more importantly, why haven't we ever gone up there?"

Hank cleared his throat loudly. "Am I the only fictive that doesn't want nookie?"

"Yes," Warren and Bobby replied.

"We never go up there because those two are always up there. They're like little rabbits, I'm telling you." Warren explained.

"Ew... bunny sex!"

"Pretty much," Warren nodded. "Quiet. They're just around the corner."

And so they were. Nestled atop the hideaway, figures were barely distinguishable. There was no doubt about it. There was some action going in the Luv Shack.

"We're going to have to interrupt them somehow," Warren's feathers ruffled.

"I'm not going to barge in there." Bobby crossed his arms against his chest.

"What we need, Robert," Hank ginned toothily," is a plan."

"I've got it!" Bobby exclaimed.

Hank and Warren cringed, then when Bobby started telling his plan, the began to prepare their friends funeral. Joke or not, dressing up as Batman was not a good idea.

"What?" Bobby threw his hands up in the air. Neither of his friends replied, contenting themselves with badly suppressed smiles. "You certainly don't expect me to freeze their butts. Either of you have a plan?"

"What we lack in good grace we make in fortitude," Hank asserted.

"You've been doing an awful lot of tactful aversions lately," Warren commented.

"Ah, but they work so well."

"Don't doubt it," Warren replied, the corner of his mouth going up slightly.

"I think they're done." Bobby iced up.

"I'm wondering if they're going to kick our butts," Warren looked wary.

"Worry not, my airborne comrade."

"You have a plan." Bobby grinned.

"Adapted from your own. So I give you partial credit Robert, or, if need be, the entire blame."

"Stop stalling, Blue, what is it?"

"Shadow puppets," Hank said with a serious, strange sort of certainty.

"Shadow puppets?" Bobby echoed dumbfounded.

"Shadow puppets," Warren asserted with a mischievous grin.

"I don't get it." Bobby felt a little stupid. But at the same time he didn't think that the response "Shadow puppets." would have meant anything to anyone outside of the two blue lunatics he was standing with.

"I'll get the flashlights." Warren darted off.

"I'll start setting everything up," Hank assured him.

"And I'll start trying to catch a clue!" Bobby grumped.

Warren fetched the flashlights, Hank set things up. Bobby sat down, feeling less than intelligent. Warren came back, flashlights in tow.

They settled in and decided to practice a bit before actually commencing. Bobby twiddled his thumbs.

"Looks good."

"Definitely well past adequate. I believe we're ready."

The flashlight snapped on and Bobby saw the Batsignal on the ceiling.

And Bobby wasn't the only one who had seen it. From the top shelf, Dick saw it instantly, and Roy would have seen it, had he not been dumped off the bed by his lover.

"What the hell Dick?"

"Batsignal," was the short reply as Dick began hunting for his uniform.

"And?" Roy sat up grumpily. With as often as it happened, Roy was getting to think "Batsignal" was a euphemism for "Impotence".

"Look, I have to go." Dick pulled on his pants.

"I'm sure Bats can handle it." Roy grumbled.

"Roy, come on. Give me a break here."

Dick finished dressing and jumped down from the closet shelf. He did a forward roll, grabbed onto a Nautica sweater and slid down the length of it. As Roy watched his feelings of dejection and depression quickly edged into frustration and annoyance. So it was most unfortunate when Bobby couldn't keep his snickers to a low decibel level.

Roy turned in the direction of the snicker. "What the hell was that?" His eyes narrowed and he walked in the direction of the snicker.

"Great. Good going Bobby." Warren hissed.

"It was funny," Bobby whispered in reply.

"Not to shatter this moment," Hank interjected, "but perhaps we should hide?"

The mutant fictives hauled butt in different directions. Hank climbed up onto the next shelf in the closet, hiding behind an old hula doll. Warren and Bobby stayed on the lower shelf, scrambling behind a stack of books.

And a very upset, extremely frustrated, half dressed Roy stalked towards the snickers intent on putting the hurt on someone. Most likely the laughing voyeur since Batman wasn't available.

"Did you see that, just flipped right over," Bobby was recounting in a whisper.

And Warren shushed him.

"Don't shush me," Bobby whispered back. "It wasn't my fault."

And that's when Warren covered Bobby's mouth with his hand.

"I heard you," Roy said menacingly. "You think you can just spy on me? Okay then, you can come out and play."

"We're going to die before we ever kidnap him," Bobby half whispered half mouthed to Warren.

Warren looked at Bobby and mustered all the patience he could. "I can fly. Hank can think. All that guy's got is arrows, which he doesn't even have now cause he's half naked. I think we can take him."

"But--"

"Don't worry, Bobby." Warren frowned. "The plan is still on. We just have to wait for Hank to make the first move."

"Hank's making the first move?"

"It certainly doesn't look like we are."

"That's a slash joke, isn't it?" Bobby asked.

"We're Reccea's fictives. What do you think?" Warren smirked.

"I'm just hoping that Hank doesn't make a move on Guinness freak there."

"Hank's straight, remember."

"For now you mean."

Warren bit his lip. "Reccea wouldn't be that mean."

"What are you talking about?" Bobby glanced at him.

"I think being mute and gay would be a little too much for Hank to handle."

"He'd be Joey."

"Exactly," Warren nodded. "And Reccea's a tad more creative than that. She'd just give him to Noel."

"Where the hell is Hank?" Bobby muttered. It was a very good question indeed.

"Okay, that's it." Roy grabbed a few of the pencil-eraser heads lying about and hefted them into the air. "I'm going to be forced to hurt you. Whoever you are."

Hank dropped down from his position behind the hula doll and slammed Roy over the head with the hula doll head. Roy dropped to the ground with a loud thud. "I highly doubt that, Mr. Harper."

And Bobby and Warren, their clothes mysteriously crumpled, climbed out of their hiding spot. Bobby nudged Roy with his toe.

"Don't you think that was a bit overkill?" Bobby asked.

"You're clothes are in less than exemplary shape," Hank pointed out.

They looked at their clothes. "No they're not." Bobby shook his head.

"Don't know what you're talking about," Warren smiled innocently.

"Well don't just afterglow," Hank admonished. "Help me hide him before the other G-boy comes back."

"Right-o!" Bobby said with a fake English accent.

And everyone looked at him weird.

They tied Roy up and dragged him off to a place where no one would ever find him. The hideout at the center of the maze, underneath Reccea's bed. No one would dare to venture down there. Fictives sometimes didn't return from the maze.

He woke about halfway there so they had to gag him. Roy was quite disgruntled and he thought not getting laid was the worst thing that was going to happen to him that night.

~story index~