"Jean?"

"Yes, honey?"

"My head itches."

Jean sighed and pulled the car to the side of the road. There was very little traffic on the back road that led to the other street that curved around to turn back on itself which led to a side street which finally arrived, after a terribly misplaced U-turn, at the driveway. But they weren't there yet.

"My head itches," Scott repeated.

Jean likely would have banged her head on the steering wheel repeatedly were she not celestial power incarnate. "That's because you're wearing your bright blue skullcap, honey."

"Oh," replied Scott in a very small voice indeed, and sheepishly removed his bright blue skullcap. He subsequently corrected the problem of the itch, and tossed his skullcap into the back seat, where it landed without much circumstance -- after all, it was only a poor little bright blue skullcap.

Jean pulled back onto the long and winding road to the driveway, adjusting her rearview mirror as she did so. Of course, she didn't need a rearview mirror, because she was, after all, celestial power incarnate. But sometimes even the Phoenix had bad days.

"Jean?"

"Yes, honey?" she asked almost too sweetly.

"Um, nothing," Scott replied as he sank woefully into his seat.

"No, dear, you may *not* drive," Jean responded to the question her husband had been too afraid to ask.

"Oh," he said. "Okay."

She drove for several minutes and eventually came to the terribly misplaced U-turn when the car began to skid. This was obviously bad, and particularly strange because it was quite a lovely day indeed. But of course the unnatural patch of ice was the doing of the ever-adjectevial Robert Drake, and he would be sorely reprimanded.

"Jean?"

"Quiet, Scott, I'm trying to drive!"

He could have sworn he saw her eyes glowing with celestial power. But that was silly.

The car was lifted with said celestial power, and deposited by the driveway, which was much easier than the conventional method of travelling from point A to point B.

Jean got out of the car, slamming the door behind her and walking with imperious anger towards the door of the building. She radiated a faint cosmic glow, which was probably a lot brighter than Scott thought. He couldn't see much cosmic glowy stuff through the ruby quartz.

Jean did not ring the bell. Celestial power incarnate would never do such a thing. Instead, she strode right into the building without a care or worry.

Scott found that terribly rude. And since he was most decidedly not celestial power incarnate, he had to ring the bell.

It was answered by a tall, furry creature wearing a trench coat. Scott did not recognize it. Perhaps this was one of the new students.

"Hello, hello, hello," greeted the fuzzy creature three times in rapid succession. "Won't you come in? Won't you come in? Please, have a drink. Please, have a drink." The creature guided Scott into the house by his arm, and to his horror he found the interior all painted a uniform shade of bright chartreuse. (Of course, it was toned down a bit due to his ever-present ruby quartz sunglasses, but Scott was used enough to life's red tint that he could certainly recognise something as garish as bright chartreuse when he was faced with it.)

"Oh, do you like what I've done? I *do* like what I've done! Oh, I do so hope you like what I've done," the creature said as it poured some blue liquid into a glass for Scott and handed it to him.

"Um," said Scott, because there wasn't much else that he really could say.

"So nice to meet you, Mr. Summers," said the creature, having forgotten its manners initially and only now recalling them. "You *are* Mr. Summers, aren't you? Of course, this *is* the Marvel Universe, and when in doubt, it's Mr. Summers. If it's not, they'll usually correct you soon enough. And you haven't corrected me yet, so I'll just assume that you're Mr. Summers. Terrible thing, that family tree of yours." It poured itself another drink.

Having severely limited options, Scott resorted to a tactic that had helped him many times in the thick of battle, and he likely owed his life to.

"JEAN!"

The awful ferret-creature restrained Scott as he tried to force his way upstairs.

"No!" Scott protested. "Let me see my wife!" He continued to struggle against the creature's furry limbs holding him back.

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that," the fuzzy creature said, nearly echoing the placid tones of everyone's favourite psycho computer, HAL, and thoroughly disturbing Scott in the process. (At least, more so than one can be disturbed upon finding his room painted a uniform shade of bright chartreuse and a fuzzy ferret-creature at his door.) "Now, Mr. Summers, won't you please sit down? Have a drink. Calm your nerves."

It was certainly a relief that it had stopped repeating everything thrice, but Scott was still not pleased with this unusual turn of events. "I want to see Jean," he growled through clenched teeth.

The creature forcibly sat Scott down and pushed a drink into his hand. "Please sit down; have a drink. Enjoy yourself."

Scott stood up immediately. "What have you done with Jean?" he demanded vehemently.

"Whoa!" The creature was apparently taken off guard by Scott's rapid actions, and launched into a neo-hippie sort of speech pattern completely irrelevant to anything it had previously said, thereby displaying that it was most decidedly not at one with its pre-planned character type. "Hey, man, I didn't do anything with your wife. Trust me, man, she's, like, around here somewhere or something, man. Celestial power incarnate doesn't, like, get lost very easily and stuff. Man."

Scott doubted he could trust anything that had not only painted his living room a bright shade of chartreuse, but also was so willing to fluctuate between character patterns as this thing was.

As if by some sick cue, Jean waltzed down the stairs in an impossibly short, nearly transparent silken thing, which wasn't very substantial at all. It was a lovely shade of bright chartreuse.

Scott's jaw dropped open and nearly hit the floor.

"What's wrong?" Jean innocently queried, her eyes as wide as a deer's caught in someone's headlights.

"What's with all the neon green?" Scott demanded, exasperated.

"It's *chartreuse,* honey, and this room is chartreuse as well. If this" -- she indicated her ... garment -- "were fuschia, it wouldn't match at all." She walked across the room to her poor pitiful husband and looked just over his shoulder. Scott turned behind himself to see what Jean was talking about. All that remained was an empty martini glass.

"Where is he?" Jean demanded.

"Wha -- who?" Scott asked, now finally crossing the border between just slightly confused and really confused.

"Elwood!"

"Who?"

"Elwood! He was just here! You know, tall, furry, cute, sociable, adorable ... " She counted the qualities off on her fingers, which sported a lovely shade of bright chartreuse nail polish.

Scott raised his palms in front of him to stop her awful list, which was only growing more awful by the second. "Stop, please, no more. Jean, this is silly. Let's just go home." He took her wrist and began leading her out of the living room.

"No!" Jean protested, snatching her hand back. "Besides," she continued primly, smoothing the transparent thing, "we *are* home."

"But I love you," Scott insisted, hoping that such a sentiment would be enough to keep Jean here and away from that terrible creature who had painted his living room bright chartreuse.

"And I love Elwood," Jean countered. "Just leave me alone," she continued, turning away from her husband. "I don't want to talk to you anymore." She folded her arms and ignored him.

"But -- "

"Just go."

Dejected, Scott reluctantly left Jean in the chartreuse living room. She would come to her senses soon.

He hoped.

Scott Summers was not having a good day. Thankfully, that awful ferret-creature had not returned, nor had it found it necessary and vital to paint *everything* bright chartreuse ... the kitchen was a calming shade of cerulean. The problem with this, of course, was that all the food had somehow turned cerulean as well, and nobody could really eat anything that was cerulean unless it was truly supposed to be cerulean.

He halfheartedly unwrapped a cerulean foil covered package and found it was cerulean macaroni and cheese. Good enough, he thought, and set it in the cerulean microwave, pushed cerulean buttons, and waited for it to reheat.

"Welcome back, mon ami," a distinctly Gambitian voice called from behind. Scott turned around, but couldn't find anyone.

"Up here."

He warily tilted his head towards the cerulean ceiling and found that Remy was indeed suspended from the ceiling and apparently stuck in that position. "What are you doing on the ceiling?" he queried.

"Huh?"

"The ceiling," Scott repeated, resisting the urge to flail his arms about in the deep confusion that had seated itself in his poor brain. "Why are you on the ceiling?"

"Oh, dis?" Remy tapped the ceiling with his staff, which had somehow simply appeared in his hand out of nowhere.

"Yes, dis," Scott replied. "I mean dat. I mean, that!"

The microwave beeped.

Scott jumped about a foot in the air. "Yeagh!"

"Don' worry," Remy assured him. "It be alright. Only a microwave." He shrugged, as much as one could possibly shrug when he was firmly affixed to the ceiling.

Of course, that reminded Scott of exactly how odd this position was, and repeated his question as he removed his cerulean macaroni from the microwave. "So why exactly are you on the ceiling?"

"No reason," Remy replied. "Gambit jus' hangin' out."

Scott decided he was going to ignore the suspended Cajun and sit at the cerulean table and calmly eat his cerulean macaroni with a cerulean fork. It was, however, nearly impossible to simply *ignore* someone who was watching you eat - and someone who the laws of physics apparently didn't apply to any longer, at that! "Would you stop that?"

"'top what?" Remy twirled his staff.

"That ... that!!" Scott's arms, apparently of their own volition, finally gave up on remaining sedentary and did flail about maniacally, much to Scott's horror. He stood up, abandoning his cerulean macaroni. "This is insane!" he finally decided. "My food is cerulean. My wife is chartreuse and with -"

"Non, non - Jean's not chart'euse, she's wit' de pooka. De pooka's de chart'euse one."

Jean was with the pooka? "Jean's wit' de pooka?" Scott repeated. "I mean, she's what - she's huh, what's she doing with the pooka? They're not -"

Remy nodded, as much as one can nod while affixed to the ceiling. "Dey havin' fun," he insisted. "Not like you - alt'ough Gambit could t'ink of some interesting t'ings to do wit' macaroni ..."

Scott did *not* want to t'ink - rather, think - about that. The cerulean macaroni was far from appetizing. In fact, he was feeling rather ill, contemplating the various substances that had gone into the pasta, as well as in Jean's drinks, and Remy ... well, he was just Remy, and not much could be done about that, even if it did appear he'd been bitten by a radioactive ceiling fan.

And Jean - dear, sweet Jean, God have mercy on her soul (as it had the other five times) - she was locked in Scott's own bedroom with that terrible, horrible rabid pooka. Scott wanted to rip that thing's heart out - if it had one - and show it, still live and pulsating, to its owner as it took its last breath.

Or not.

Still, the thought of Jean and - it - had made Scott not simply ill, but horribly, violently ill. Perhaps if he was lucky, it wasn't really Jean. Maybe Jean was held captive somewhere within the house, and the woman in the chartreuse transparent thing was really Madelyne Pryor, and she was exacting revenge on poor defenseless Scott. She would do that. Jean wouldn't. Jean would have much more decency than to lock herself in her bedroom with a pooka.

And because his bedroom was ... occupied ... Scott had to lie down elsewhere. He opened the door to the first available room, and was shocked to find it a calming shade of mint green, but pleased despite the shock. At least it wasn't chartreuse.

When Scott Summers awoke, he found that the room's color had changed to soothing wisteria, which threw him a bit off guard, but he adjusted soon enough. Groggily, he left the room, pointedly ignoring the shouts, screams, giggles, and weeping that came from what he'd always thought was his and Jean's own bedroom.

He vomited on the spot.

That, however, left a particularly nasty taste in his mouth, so he went back downstairs to the kitchen - now tangerine-colored - for some water or something. Gambit was nowhere to be found.

He opened the tangerine refrigerator and found it filled to capacity with bright tangerine-colored cans of Spam.

"Oh, brother," he sighed, and opened the freezer.

Out jumped Havok.

Scott spluttered in disbelief. "Hey! How did - I mean, why - I mean, I mean, HEY!"

Alex leaned against the refrigerator and folded his arms nonchalantly. "You called," he explained. "So here I am."

"But you're *dead*!" Scott insisted.

He unfolded his arms and spoke condescendingly. "Scott, Scott, Scott - you don't get it, do you? Remember what the pooka said? This *is* the Marvel Universe. And the number one rule here is that nobody ever really dies. Sort of like the X-Files. Or was that Highlander? I can never remember. And on top of that, I'm a Summers. This family never dies."

"You're dead," Scott repeated.

"Actually," Alex began, "I'm not. They just decided to put me in some other book to sell more comics."

"What? What?"

"Don't you start repeating everything twice, too. You'll be as bad as that pooka. Dreadful thing."

The truth of the situation at hand was finally beginning to sink in, and Scott went to the tangerine-colored telephone. "You're alive," he said. "Someone should know about this. Lorna. Yes. She'll be happy to know that you're alive. You're alive. Why the hell are you alive? You're dead! You were dead! Dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead ---"

"NO!" Alex protested loudly, diving in front of his brother to prevent him from placing that call. "You can't do that!"

"Why not?"

"Welll ... that's where it gets a little tricky." Alex looked to the ceiling for advice, but sadly, Gambit was no longer there and could not offer suggestions, warped though they might be. "I'm in an alternate universe. And this freezer" - he tapped the box's face - "is the only link between this world and the other. You wouldn't believe how awful it is. Hang on a minute." Alex opened the freezer and called within, "Be right there, honey!"

"Honey?" Scott queried. "Lorna's here. She's not there. Is she there? She'll be mad ..."

"Long story," Alex explained. "They sort of married me off to Madelyne Pryor."

"But Madelyne is upstairs," Scott informed his brother, now thoroughly confused. "Upstairs. And Lorna ... and you're dead ... dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead - "

"Pull yourself together man!" Alex exclaimed, shaking his brother into coherence. "You're a Summers! We know how to deal with time travel and alternate universes and clones and evil geneticists! Especially you! This is your life, man! And if you're really got Maddie upstairs - which you don't, by the way, yes, that's really Jean - then I don't know what to tell you, man. Just go with it. These writers are nuts, but hey, nothing we can do about it. Bye!" And with that, Alex Summers jumped back into the freezer and closed the door behind him.

When Scott opened the freezer again, all he saw were bags of ice, with no brother of his in sight.

And he refused to eat Spam.