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Challenge #4: The Round Robin
a collaboration by the active group members

The hippos were laughing at him. Not that this was strange or anything. At 3 o'clock in the morning, anything was possible in "the-deranged-mind-of-Robert-Drake" Land.

If I were a flying plaid hippo figment of imagination, I'd be laughing too... After all, they don't have to deal with alien bugs, or having their houses pulled down, or Twinkie shortages... although, the Twinkie shortages are the worst at 3 in the morning... There's more in the kitchen, but that's so far away from the couch, and the TV is pretty, even though it's only showing re-runs and- oh my god, is that Pokemon?

And so Bobby sat, enraptured with the pretty pictures of cartoon ...things... while the hippos dance above his head to the PokeRap.

---

This song is going to be stuck in my head all day now. Or night--morning--whatever. It will still be there if and when I ever fall asleep...and the hippos will still be laughing. And they'll be dancing to the PokeRap. I think I've officially gone insane.

"I have gone insane!" Bobby yelled to the empty room, "and I need sugar!"

Reluctantly dragging himself off of the oh-so-comfortable couch, Bobby headed toward the kitchen, contemplating what a life of insanity would be like, and bopping in rhythm to the PokeRap. The hippos in is head were now sporting large gold chains (with clocks hanging from the end). And for some reason, one of the them was break-dancing.

"Farfetch, Jigglypuff, Kingler, Rhyhorn, Clefable, Wigglytuff!" Bobby sang as he jumped around the corner, in his trademark dance style (a cross between bad disco and bad martial arts moves).

"Bobby?"

---

The ever lovin' Beast looked guiltily up from the counter where he'd been furtively stuffing the mansions entire supply of Twinkies down his Twinkie-starved gullet. With a worried frown he inspected Bobby's howling gyrations and asked "What's the matter? Did you get stung by a bee or something?" And then with deepening worry lines on his furry blue face, "Has someone else possessed your body again?"

Upon seeing his best friend with a telltale Twinkie-filling moustache, and empty Twinkie packets discarded around him, Bobby pulled up short and his mouth dropped open in shock. An accusatory finger slowly rose to point at the now guilty looking Beast, as the plaid hippos in his head stopped their dancing and singing, and proceeded to line up into a firing squad with semi-automatic machine guns in their hands. Their still-laughing mouths suddenly seamed to contain rows of sharp and very evil-looking teeth, while the clock chains they wore had turned into ammunition belts and dog-tags.

---

The moment stills into several long seconds.

Beasts gravely ponders the accusatory finger, partly considering the ramification of eating so many twinkies in one sitting. The urge to explain his actions was counterpointed by the slowly rising sick feeling that comes with being sugar loaded too soon and too fast. The still silent room is breaks when a unknown soft rustle sweeps lightly over the silk blue fur.

"YOU!", exclaims the enflamed (ironically) cool man of ice.

Outraged and goaded by the plaid hippos of vengeance, Drake's pointed index fingers starts to frost as bits of ice crystals form incandescent in the strong kitchen spotlights.

Pan the scene from the tip of the finger away to the full profile of Bobby then up and away to focus back to Hank

"Now you don't want to do anything has-", McCoy gasps as a cold chill blasts his fur, taking his breath away for an instant as the cold air stifles. Slowly breathing in the next few breaths, his eyes blurred his fur lightly stiff from the sudden chill and the soft crackling of ice crystals as he fur shivers, Beast; known affectionately as Dr.McCoy to some .... lifts his hands from the empty Twinkie wrappers.

Still but breathing steadily, a cold icy credulous reason behind clear eyes, Drake stands still with a finger still outstretched.

The warm lights do little to warm his icy cold countenance, the warm lights playing with the light skin and dark shadows of his chests and abs. His hair softly ruffling back and forth in the recoil blast of cold he had just unleashed on the 'affectionable'Beast.

---

Blinking, Bobby looked at what he had done.

Damn, I wanted to freeze his fur off ... then he'd look like one of those bald sphinx cats for a week.

Bobby started snickering, earning a weird look from Beast.

Then he realised.

Waitasec. His fur's all white now. He looks like ...like...

"Mankey!"

The hippos had changed into mini versions of the white, fluffy Pokemon character, whom the Beast now greatly resembled, and were bouncing around in the air.

Bobby pulled a move, and struck a "gotta catch `em all" pose, creating ice crystals in the air to produce that coveted "sparkly background effect", and producing a life sized ice-a-ball in his hand.

"I CHOOSE YOU!"

The Mankey-hippos laughed as the extremely sleep-deprived man shouted, "FETCH!", looking expectantly at the furry Twinkie-guzzling genius.

They were disappointed, though, that the gun-toting members had been called away to haunt a certain writer known in circles as "The Hack", but were sure that the others were having fun anyway.

---

Frozen in his pose for several long seconds, Bobby realized that his Mankey-hippos were not attacking the now white-furred genius. Figures, he sighed to himself, visibly slumping. I guess I'll just have to do it myself then.

Straightening up, tongue slightly out in a look of determined concentration, the Iceman launched his ice-a-ball at his prey, striking him in the middle of the forehead.

"OUCH!"

"Gottcha!" Bobby crowed, jumping up and down in victory.

"Dammit Bobby, that was ice! That really hurt!" Hank exclaimed, dropping the few remaining Twinkies to clutch his forehead, "Oh, I have a lump on my forehead. I can feel it forming as we speak. Ironically, I believe I need an ice-pack."

Bobby stopped his victory jig at the sound of Hank's annoyed voice. Damn! Doesn't anything I see on TV work? Frustrated, Bobby glared at Hank as he walked towards the fridge, when his eyes settled on the floor. "Twinkies!" the hippos in his head shouted. Bobby needed no other direction than that: he leapt for them, just as Hank's trademark snack-in-danger sense went off.

---

Realising that his precious Twinkies were about to fall into the hands of his biggest Twinkie-eating-competitor in the mansion, Hank used every ounce of the agility and dexterity that had earned him his codename to get a blue-furred paw on the fallen twinkes and snatched them out of the way of the diving Bobby. With his Twinkie target now missing and a clear floor in front of him, Bobby's dive took him headfirst into the dining table leg, which promptly buckled under the impact and caused the corner of the table to drop down on him in a double-whammy. Amidst a flurry of Twinkie wrappers, that were gently floating to the floor after being knocked off the now listing table, Bobby sat up, rubbing his head and trying to get both the room and the dancing plaid Hippos (that had now trippled in number and seamed to be chirping like little birds) to stop moving. Hank was dancing around him in a victory jig, holding the prize Twinkies up in the air. Everytime Hank passed through his line of vision he seamed to be wearing a plaid kilt the same colour as the Hippos.

"What the hells going on in here!?"

At the sound of the very irritated voice, Bobby's head snapped to the doorway and he had to put both hands out to stop himself from falling over, as the sudden movement seamed to cause the room to cartwheel around him. Hank stopped mid-jig and hid his Twinkie-filled paws behind his back as he gave the mansion's favourite stick-in-the-mud, one Scott Summers, a guilty look.

"What are you two doing creating such a racket in the middle of the night? SOME of us like to sleep at night so that we can be properly functioning members of society during the day... But I'm sure you wouldn't know anything about that!" He said the last with an irritated glare in Bobby's direction. Both Bobby and Hank felt like a pair of five-year-olds caught with their hands in the cookie jar just before dinner. The hippos had stopped dancing too, some of them were standing with their heads hung low and one foot drawing invisible patters on the ground in front of them, while the rest were resetfully sticking their tongues out in Scott's direction.

THE END

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