A Short Interlude Between Stories

Layla Voll

A very short fanfic inspired by something someone said. Nothing belongs to me, it all belongs to Marvel. --Layla Voll

"One diamond."

"One club."

"One spade."

"One no trump."

The attractive blue-skinned woman leaned over to the man on her left and purred, "I believe that some people might consider that.... cheating."

The bald man swallowed hard but maintained his cool. He'd faced rampaging mobs, alien invasions, and his own son altering all of reality without flinching. He wasn't going to crack now. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean," he lied. "Obviously, my partner's mental shields are perfectly adequate to prevent the accidental leakage of information."

"'Accidental' is not what I'm worried about." The woman's seductive, dangerous purr reminded him again that it was the lioness, not the lion, who did the hunting. However, she chose not to continue the game of cat and mouse, or the extended metaphor, and directed her attention to her partner instead.

The young man across the table had been shifting his cards around, amusing himself by studying the patterns. Finally he looked up when he thought his partner was done intimidating their opponents. "Er... two spades." Doug Ramsey enjoyed card games, especially complex ones, but this particular social event was making him just a little nervous. If he was going to be brought back just for a card game, he wished it could have been poker with Sam and 'Berto.

The white-haired Master of Magnetism looked down at a hand that might charitably have been called very bad, and did not deign to bid again. "Tell me: why, exactly, are we doing this?"

Mystique sighed theatrically. "I have already explained this numerous times. We are gathered here today so that at least one person will read this fanfic, short and pathetic as it is, all the way through."