Megan and Kane meet

[x-welshpixie.livejournal.com]

It was a sunny day. Garrison appreciated that, after spending the last two months in inclement weather or being shot at. It was easy to forget how pleasant little things could be under those circumstances, where you could focus on just relaxing out on the patio. Simple pleasures, they called them, and anything that didn't involve a uniform or traveling in a stealth jet was simple enough for him. Kane pushed his sunglasses up on his face to rub his eyes, glad that his skin had finally reverted back to its normal hue. The week of beet red burns from the blast he'd been caught in during their fight in Pakistan had made him look ridiculous, but except for the shortness of his regrowing hair, he looked by and large back to normal.

Megan, too, was enjoying the sunshine outside on campus. She had her sketchbook out, intending to get back into drawing, but she was really just doodling and feeling mildly sleepy. The bench by the fountain was usually a good place to run into people when she felt kind of bored and craved stimulus from people besides her suite-mates.

She looked up when a shadow fell onto her notebook and moved on. Was it... Mr. Kane, one of the teachers, walking by? He looked different with his hair short.


"Hello," she greeted him.

"Good afternoon, Megan." Garrison said affably, stopping in his walk and instead coming over to take a seat at the fountain. "Out enjoying the weather?"

"Yeah," she said brightly, popping the cap back onto her green marker. "Hey, you're one of the teachers, right? I haven't had you in any of my classes yet. But it's only my second semester."

"Garrison Kane. And you likely won't get me unless someone comes down with the flu. I'm the emergency substitute teacher, but I have a different full time job." Her accent was obviously British. Was it Welsh? He'd seen her file when she'd entered the school, but had only glanced at it.

"Oh, nice. What do you do the rest of the time?" It was hard to imagine the teachers having lives outside of school or X-men missions sometimes, even substitute teachers, but a lot of them were multi-talented like that.

"I'm an Inspector for the RCMP. They have seconded me down to the Federal Bureau of Investigations for now, so I work out of the FBI field office in the city." Garrison said matter of factly.

"Ohh, like a detective?" said Megan, curiosity in her tone. "Do you ever use your powers to help solve cases?" It was really cool what a lot of the older mutants could do.

"Well, my powers are mostly of the 'pick up that car' type, so they don't factor in much, but yeah, it's a lot like a detective." Kane said with a nod. "How about you, Megan?"

"My powers don't really help me do that much. My dust didn't even do anything to that crazy earthquake mutant we ran up against in Pakistan! Normally it at least confuses people enough to where I can escape if I need to. But um... flying is pretty fun and I'm getting really good at it," she added cheerfully. At least she and Meggan and Catseye had all survived against Quake.

"You can fly, eh? I'm jealous. Coming here, you see all kinds of powers, but the one I'm always envious off is when you see Warren or Crystal up riding on the thermals above the school." Garrison's voice held an honest admiration, even a bit of far away longing. "But hey, powers aren't the only thing. What are you drawing?"

"I wouldn't give up flying for anything. Hmm... Warren... That reminds me. I was supposed to meet him a while ago. I'm always forgetting things, with or without mutant powers," she sighed. "Oh this?" she picked up her sketchbook and tilted it toward Garrison so he could see the drawing. "I was going to draw the fountain but um... I'm really bad at perspective." The skewed drawing of the fountain now had extra blue and green swirls coming out of it, and there was a green fairy hovering over it, effectively covering the worst parts of the original sketch so that it was harder to tell the mistakes.

"I see you like fairies, which when I think about it, is an immensely stupid thing to say." Kane craned his neck to look at the drawing. "Is that something you grew up with, stories about them?"

"Yeah, I was always into fairy tales and myths. I have the complete works of the Brothers Grimm," she said proudly. "Actually my sister had to get it for an advanced literature class and then she gave it to me when she was done and I read it." She glanced back at her drawing. "I just didn't think that I would ever have wings like a real fairy. Makes you think, doesn't it? I mean, what if the stories back then about fairies and gods were inspired by real mutants?"

"There's been a lot of speculation, that maybe early mutants were responsible for a lot of myths. There's a lot of churches that get very angry at the suggestion that the miracles of various holy men in history could have been mutant abilities, yeah." Kane remembered when it was common for atheists to use that argument on the internet, and the indignant explosions that followed them. "You're Welsh, right? Aren't the fair folk big in Welsh mythology?"

"Yep, I'm from Wales. The Welsh have the Mabinogion, which is basically a hero cycle about Pryderi. It deals a lot with the Otherworld, which is a supernatural realm that's like a mirror of the real world. Basically everyone there has powers. Well, the king and all the important people do. It's really cool and really weird, but when I was a kid I was more into Irish mythology because they had the Sidhe who were basically like Tolkien elves, and the mythology is just so gut-wrenchingly tragic. It's like your favorite movie where all the best characters die."

"I can see the appeal for a young girl. When I was a kid, I was more into talking turtles who were also ninjas. I guess I got the wrong books." He grinned, gently mocking himself.

"Oh yeah? I saw the movie--the newer one. It was OK. I guess I was too little to have seen the original show. Maybe it's weird since I'm pretty happy all the time, but I really get fed up with movies and shows where everything ends happily all the time and the hero always wins. Well, maybe I was just jaded early on because everyone kept telling me that it's never like that in real life and they seemed to be right. So yeah, I like depressing stuff. But I'm not emo or anything. OK maybe I like some emo stuff but not the music at all. Eew. What kind of music do you like?"

"Canadian stuff, mostly. The Hip, Blue Rodeo, my buddy Johnny. Drop by my place sometime and I'll give you a disc of his stuff. His band plays Harry's every week." Her views on the happy ending were interesting. Obviously Megan wasn't just the happy girl she seemed.

"Oh cool. I like pretty much any kind of rock. Um, where is your place?" He might have said but Megan was really bad at remembering stuff like that.

"I'm in the wing with the other teacher's suites." The teachers and adults were all clustered in the same place, so he'd be easy to find. "So, you've now been here a while. How are you finding it?"

"Oh, right. I like it a lot here. The girls in my dorm are really great. My classes are kind of hard, but I'm doing pretty good in them. So you're pretty new to the mansion too, right? Do you like it here?"

"I'm coming up on four years here, to be honest." Kane shrugged, slightly self-consciously. "And it's a madhouse, but I enjoy it, I think. It helps that I have a lot of good friends here."

"Ah, sorry, so you're not new. Just new to the FBI and stuff here. You're from Canada right? I really want to go visit. How far is Niagra Falls from here?"

"Quite a long drive. I think it's about ten hours or so up the 390 to Buffalo, and there north to the Falls. It is pretty amazing though. There's this walkway that goes under the falls carved into the rock, and you can go down to a little viewing platform about two thirds of the way down. Only way to get a sense of just how much water is coming down and how much power is there." Kane nodded. "Also, makes you think anyone who went over in a barrel is absolutely dead crazy to do it."

"That's farther than I thought," Megan admitted. "I guess eventually I'll get used to how far spread out everything is here. That sounds awesome, though. I definitely want to go. Did people really go over Niagra Falls in barrels? And they survived?"


"Yeah, every year some yahoo tries to go over the falls and make a name for themselves. Some survive, most get killed. Two people have actually gone over without any more protection than a swimsuit and survived, but those were million to one chances." Kane stretched an got up. "I drive back up to Toronto a few times a year to visit my sister. Next time I'm going, it's not a big detour to see the Falls if you'd like to come."


"Really? That would be awesome!" said Megan, beaming.

"We'll if you say that after discovering that in my car, I control the music the entire trip up."

"I guess that's fair. I'll stop by later to get that CD."