Title: Warning: Retired X-Man....Bored
(aka Logan's Misadventures as a Retired X-man)

Author: Wolverine6Claws Email: wolverine6claws@ yahoo.com

Rating: PG - humorous, just for fun

Pairing: Storm/Wolverine

Disclaimer: The characters are not mine, they are owned by Marvel Characters, Inc. The story idea is mine and that's all I make claim to. No profit is made from the use of the characters, it's just for fun. No disrespect ever intended to Marvel or the X-Men.



As they exited the Jeep, Ororo smiled and gave Logan a small kiss as they went their separate ways in the parking lot. She could only imagine what he had planned for today's shopping trip, but only smiled as he made his way through the parked cars heading toward the far side of the store.

Ororo turned and entered the main doors and was casually looking at a few new outfits on display since the last time she'd been here, when the store manager approached her.

"Excuse me? Ms. Munroe?" he asked politely.

"Mrs. Logan, if you please," Ororo corrected and glanced at him. The manager did his best not to express his dismay at having to say that name, yet again, but relinquished his own desire in order to be polite.

"Yes, of course, Mrs...... Logan."

"Good day, Mr. Bonczek," Ororo greeted with a smile, knowing full well the store manager's feelings about her husband. "What can I do for you?" she asked.

"Well, ma'am, if you wouldn't mind... I'd like to ask you to accompany me upstairs, to the security control room..." he began, to which Ororo simply raised an eyebrow. "I have something you might wish to see... footage of your husband's last visit to our store...." Bonczek seemed very hesitant to broach the subject with her, as this wasn't the first time they've sat in committee over the retired X-Man's less than appealing behavior while visiting the store. But Ororo found Logan's remedy for boredom quite appealing, and the prospect of learning new ways that one Wolverine uses to keep himself occupied was intriguing to the weather witch.

"I would be happy to accompany you, Mr. Bonczek," Ororo replied amiably.

On the way to the security monitoring room, Bonczek quickly briefed her on the theme of Logan's last outing. As they entered the room, one of the security officers was just finishing loading the tape into a machine for their viewing. Bonczek nodded to the officer and took the offered remote control from him and gestured for Ororo to come closer. She stepped up to the console and watched as Logan's image appeared, a bit distorted, through the closed-circuit camera inside the compact space of an elevator.

"Granted, Mrs. Logan... you're husband means no harm and, we're sure, intends to do no harm, but..." Bonczek began.

"But you cannot have people enjoying themselves in your store..." Ororo completed.

"Precisely," he replied before realizing. "No, no... that's not what I meant."

"Go on, Mr. Bonczek," Ororo invited, gesturing to the video tape showing just above their heads. Realizing that she simply wanted to get it over with, he got down to business.

"Well..... Okay, here... you see that he deliberately dropped a pen then just simply stood there. He did nothing at all, simply waited until someone bent down to pick it up. When they did, he screamed, "That's mine!" And as you see, the woman was startled in surprise and couldn't wait for the doors to open so she could vacate the car. He did this to a number of passengers before becoming bored," Bonczek informed Ororo.

The video tape now showed Logan standing in the elevator alone and, when the doors opened on the third floor, he stepped out. Ororo glanced quickly at Mr. Bonczek as he held down the fast forward button on the small remote as he continued to give her a play by play of Logan's antics.

"Then he left the car briefly, here, and returned about twenty minutes later with a fully loaded camera - which he apparently purchased in the camera department on the third floor - and proceeded to snap pictures of everyone who stepped into the elevator. We estimate he'd gotten almost a full roll before he intuitively realized that one, if not more, of those sixteen people were going to report his activities, which they did, rightfully I might add."

Ororo gave a nod as if in agreement, but Bonczek narrowed his eyes at her when she failed to hide the grin on her face. So he simply continued his debriefing.

"But by the time security was able to get to that particular car, Mr. Logan had already abandoned it. So we searched for him on the other surveillance monitors and found....... this..."

Bonczek fast forwarded the video as Ororo did her best to take the situation as seriously as the distraught man standing beside her. She watched the blurry images until he took his finger off the button to watch it play in real time. "We found him, here... in the furniture department.. . in the office section."

The video tape showed that the security camera in the ceiling was being manually panned throughout the department, it rolled past Logan who was calmly speaking to a sales clerk, then quickly reversed panning directions as the person monitoring realized they had found him. Ororo watched as Logan finished speaking with the clerk, then followed her to the counter and paid for a purchase.

Everything seemed fine and proper, until they saw the clerk apparently insisting that she call someone up to assist him with the delivery of his purchase but Logan was smiling and, shaking his head, waved her off. They watched as he single-handedly pushed a small, but expensive looking office desk, with a chair atop it, out of the department and disappeared into the public area of the store.

"Did you know your husband was going to be purchasing an office desk today?" Bonczek asked Ororo. She shook her head to indicate that she had no knowledge, but the _expression of humor on her face made her appear as an accomplice.

"Well, as you can see here, Mr. Logan was able to maneuver the desk into the elevator by himself... at which point you'd think he'd be trying to figure out how to get it out of the store. But, no, not your husband..." Ororo had to bite her lip to keep from laughing aloud at the sarcastic tone of the store manager, but watched with amused curiosity as Logan took the chair from the top of the desk and placed it carefully behind it and moved to sit down, clasping his hands together in front of him he stared at the closed doors of the elevator.

"Here is where he simply waited for the doors to open... and whenever someone tried to step into the elevator he said, "Mr. Bonczek is in a meeting! Did you have an appointment, Bub?" ...... and as you can see, everyone jumped back out of the elevator and watched the doors close with a look of astonishment on their faces...... and here we see your husband snickering in the elevator, ALONE... and this went on... well, again, until he figured we were probably onto him, and we see him removing the desk and chair from the elevator car."

Bonczek then fast forwarded the tape again, to show Logan stepping into the car, carrying a medium sized box, and giving a polite nod to the only other person there. He then stood quietly, and politely, until the other passenger exited the car. Once he was alone, he turned to place the box in the back corner of the car and stood back up, facing forward.

"Here we see him planting an empty box at the back corner... then waiting for someone to step into the car with him, and after the doors closed he simply asked nervously, "Do you hear ticking?" And now we watch as he and the other passenger look around... seemingly innocent... and now they both notice the box in the corner, then stare at each other wide eyed.

"Now, Ms. Munroe... excuse me, Mrs. Logan... this time, the patrons didn't simply leave the elevator, but exited the store... without completing their purchases! He's scaring away the customers, Ms... Mrs. Logan."

It was quite clear to Ororo that Mr. Bonczek had no idea whatsoever what to do with Logan. She remembered having that very same feeling herself a few times and empathized with him, still smirking... as she watched another segment of video tape.

"Here we see him in Car Five on the south side of the store. With these two customers he simply waited for the doors to close, then he announced very dramatically, "It's okay! Don't panic! They open again!"

"And with this customer, he simply waited for the car to start moving... and then asked quietly, "Did you feel that?" He is scaring the customers, Mrs. Logan..." he continued to forward the tape.

"And here, he would simply stand really close to someone... and sniffed at them now and again as if they reeked an odor or something... I really don't know what to make of that honestly." Bonczek remarked, shaking his head and Ororo simply smiled, waiting for the next segment.

"Here.... he tapped this person on the shoulder and when they turned around he said "It wasn't me"...... but as you can clearly see there's only the two of them in the car. He did that quite a few times also...."

Ororo's smile grew wider as she watched and listened.

"Here..." Bonczek continued, "he stood quietly in the elevator with this woman as the car traveled from the ground floor toward the fourth floor, waited a while and then simply told her, "I can see your aura." She also quickly exited the car... quite unnerved."

Ororo continued to stand there smiling, no matter how much the manager tried to convey the seriousness of the problem, as he forwarded the lengthy video tape.

"Here he spent about fifteen minutes just riding the elevator and making little explosion noises whenever someone pressed a button... okay that's not too bad," Bonczek admitted, "but we have more..."

"I am sure you do, Mr. Bonczek," Ororo replied with a grin, not at all surprised.

"Here we see Mr. Logan simply grinning and staring at another passenger... that would be disconcerting enough for any of us, but then... he took a step toward her and announced with a big smile, "I have new socks on!"...

Ororo barked a laugh on that one. Watching Logan's antics for the past forty minutes or so was taking its toll on the weather goddess' ability to suppress her own amusement. She waved a hand toward Bonczek with an apology, as he glared at her, but she still couldn't stop chuckling quietly.

"Do you think you could possibly try to understand my position in this matter, Mrs. Logan?" he asked, nearly scolding her for her amusement and flicked the tape forward to make his point as Ororo nodded in reply. She was, afterall, trying.

"Here... he drew a little square on the floor with chalk and then stood in it and announced to the other passengers, "This is MY personal space!" Ororo chuckled again as she watched Logan on the tape jut a pointed finger toward the floor as he seemed to shout at the other passengers.

The image fast forwarded again to a car containing three passengers, and Logan, who was creeping around the inside of the car slowly, listening to the elevator walls with a stethoscope. "I don't even know what he's doing here!" Bonczek said in exasperation and Ororo covered her mouth with one hand to hide the fact that she was laughing.

"And this one!" Bonczek nearly shouted as he pointed her attention to the screen. "Here he waited until the car was full of people, then waited for the car to stop and threw his arms out wide and shouted, "Group hug!", just to watch them nearly fall out of the car as they tried to stampede when the doors opened...... and THEN stood in the elevator all alone laughing his ass off when the doors closed again!!"

At this point Ororo burst out laughing.

"I can see you're not taking this matter seriously, Ms. Munroe! You leave me no choice but to ask that you never bring your husband to the store again."

"You're banning my husband from your store?" Ororo asked, still giggling. "You can not do that. Please, he is not causing any real harm."

"He's disruptive. And he unnerves other store patrons," Bonczek commented.

"Mr. Bonczek, please," Ororo responded as she got herself under control again. "My husband is newly retired... he is simply bored and trying to find his place."

"I can sympathize with that, Ms... Mrs. Logan.. but his "place" is not in my store," Bonczek nearly pleaded. "You've always been one of our most preferred customers, but..."

Ororo simply stood there, looking at him. Her commanding presence evident even with humor twinkling in her bright blue eyes. She simply grinned at him, then arched a single ivory eyebrow at him.

"Oh....... fine," Bonczek finally conceded. "I will try to be patient for a little while longer. But could you please TRY to talk to him and ASK him to... TRY.. to control himself while in the store? Please?"

"I shall do so immediately, Mr. Bonczek," Ororo replied, not sounding all that convincing, and turned to gather up her sweater and handbag from the chair near the door. "Now, if that is all... I actually have some shopping to do," she mentioned as she paused by the door.

"Certainly, certainly," the manager replied. "Thank you so much for your time. It's always a pleasure." He gave her a polite bow of his head and then a thought struck him as Ororo opened the door to leave. "Ummm... Mr. Logan... didn't happen to... accompany you.... today? Did he?" Bonczek asked hesitantly, praying that the answer was no.

Ororo simply turned to look over her shoulder at him, grinned and gave him a wink, then closed the door behind her as she left. Bonzcek immediately turned to the security officers sitting in front of the monitors and pointed his finger at the main monitor.

"Find him!"





The End
...... (of this day's adventure)





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