Molly and Kevin: Just Beachy

[x-minibruiser.livejournal.com]

Molly runs in to Kevin at Boiler Beach and apologizes for calling him a name the first time she met him. Then they get to talking about art and go see his sculptures.


Kevin was having a lazy day but it wasn't really the sort of weather to go out strolling around. It was overcast more often than not and while that lent itself to lazy days it did not lend itself to him find anything to do to occupy himself aside from art and Laura. Laura was off doing Laura things, though, and he had hit a mental block with his sculpture. So he was laid out on boiler beach. There was a track playing appropriate beach sounds to match the holographic scene spread out around Kevin who was mostly napping on the sand. Since sand was safe his shirt was off, gloves piled on top of it. The sun lamps were warm and most people didn't seem to get down here too often so Kevin figured it was safe enough to strip off his layers from the waist up.

For some odd reason Molly had not been down to Boiler Beach. Maybe cause there was a lot more stuff to explore and she just hadn't gotten around to it. Either way, the very moment the tiny girl stumbled in with her bright pink bunny hat, rainbow shirt, denim skirt, and bright blue and black zebra striped leggings her eyes were very big. "Whoa, this is awesome," she said, so taken aback that it required a hushed whisper of its greatness.

She dashed inside, temporarily not noticing Kevin as she tried to look at everything until it looped back around and she saw Kevin...aka the guy who got mad at her (understandably) for calling him a name. The quick stop she made was almost comical as she stopped in her tracks, freezing in place. "Oh...hi!" she said, managing a circular wave.

The sudden appearance of someone else had Kevin mostly confused, particularly when the kid practically pulled a Wile E. Coyote when she spotted him. The Southerner casually reached over and pulled his long sleeved, hooded tee over so he could put it back on. Tiny person with lots of energy, that was just an all bad thing to introduce into any situation where he was present. Kevin was sitting upright and mostly clothed again by time he gave her a smile which managed to mostly not look confused. "Hey, tiny and hyper."

Molly peered at him a moment when he put his shirt back on but completely shrugged it off as she glanced around the room. "This is so cool! Do you um...come here a lot?"

You were supposed to say things before you apologized, right? He didn't seem unhappy with her, but she did want to say sorry. Cause Nico was right when she said the names were bad. She had just thought they all had nicknames cause the Not-Bikers had them. Like Doctor Beast! His name was really Dr. McCoy, which was really funny cause Star Trek had a Dr. McCoy. Maybe his parents named him after that?

Kevin had to suppress a smile when Molly used a line that should have been a pick up line ninety percent of the time it was uttered. But she was twelve and apparently having an awkward moment for whatever reason. She seemed a lot less awkward on the journals. "Nah, Ah don't come here much. It's just so cloudy outside and Ah wanted some sun and a lotta the people who used to come here a lot aren't at the mansion anymore so..." he shrugged. "Practically a guaranteed quiet spot, y'know?"

"Why did they make it?" Molly said, monetarily distracted by curiosity for the moment so she forgot to bring up the apology. She lived in LA, where the beaches were always there so it seemed kind of strange. She hadn't not been around the beach long enough to miss it.

"You ever hear 'bout those people who get depressed in the winter? It's an actual disorder or whatever and in the winter months where there ain't as long sunlight people get mopey? Y'hear 'bout it a lot with folk who live up in Alaska, actually. Anyway, this was put here to sorta be therapy for people who get that. Sunlamps is how doctors sorta cheer those folk up and Ah guess they wanted to go further and make it a beach sorta." He wasn't sure how they had gotten all the sand down there to begin with. Sure, they probably hauled it in but it must have been sort of a pain to do.

"Really? That's weird," Molly said. Since they lived in LA there was a lots of sun so she'd never really heard about it. Creeping over to a chair, Molly sat down. She liked it down here. It reminded her of home. "I'm sorry I called you a name," she said quietly.

"Huh?" The look of confusion was plain on Kevin's face. He tended to go on high alert when there were people around who he wasn't very familiar with but he hadn't heard a name, Maybe all his high alert in watching her had made him slightly deaf and he'd missed the name. Or maybe it was when she'd first come in and he hadn't been paying attention yet.

"On the journals..." Molly said, lowering her eyes. She bit her lip. "I called you Rot. I'm sorry. I thought everybody had a codename like Doctor Beast and Pixie Megan and I was trying to guess it and Nico said it was not a good thing to call people names."

"Oh. That." Kevin barely remembered it, to be honest. She was a kid and he may have been a little prickly since his mutation had been an obvious sore spot of his since he'd manifested but in the end she was still a kid. Kevin was hardly going to hold a grudge against someone nearly half his age. "It's fine. Well, not fine since you shouldn't call people names but it's okay 'cause you didn't mean it to be mean and you didn't know any better. And you don't really know me so for all you knew Ah could've had a sense of humor 'bout it. Ah just...don't."

Molly nodded. Her feet didn't touch the ground yet in her chair so she bobbed her feet back and forth, glancing around. "Do you have a codename? I bet it's cool!" she said with a big grin. Everyone had cool code names. She was going to have one too. Well, she had one, but she didn't get to use it yet. It didn't count unless you got to use it on a super secret mission with your uniform and stuff. Like Batman. If he sat in his bat cave all the time, doing nothing, he'd just be Batman by himself. Right?

The enthusiasm for codenames was hard to deny and Kevin found himself smiling at the kid. "Nah, Ah don't have a codename. Ah don't do anythin' hero-y so Ah don't need one. The good news is Ah'm not a villain either 'cause they have codenames, too. Ah'm just borin'. But there's lots of not boring, hero-y types 'round the mansion for you, at least." She was young enough that she probably still had full belief that comic book heroes could be real and that people saved the day and the bad guys always lost. At least she was part right, the bit about saving the day happened. Sometimes people came back irradiated but they went off and were heroes about it anyway.

"Oh, so you're not an X-Person?" Molly said, tilting her head curiously. She thought all the adults were X-People or superheroes at least.

"You're not boring though!" she made sure to add quickly. Nobody was boring when you had powers. "What are some of the bad guy's codenames? Like Deathmatron or GladiatorStingRay Master?"

"Uh, dunno, actually. You'd have to ask the X-People. And no, Ah'm not one of 'em. Ah work for people who try to help mutants in third world countries and Ah make metal sculptures but that's kinda it. See? Boring." He didn't sound at all upset over the prospect of being boring though. Kevin sorta liked being boring.

"Oh! Elephants?" Molly said, then paused, looking to him for help. "Wait...no...El...Elpis? The thingy Angelo's with? That's a good thing! OOOH! Can I see a sculpture? Sometimes my mom and daddy take me to the museum for openings and stuff. I don't touch things. I promise!"

She did wanna know the bad guy's names, though, to see if they were cool like the ones in the comic. Cool in a bad way not in a good way. Bad people were bad but at least if she knew their names she'd know what they were talking about. The adults talked about confusing stuff a lot.

Kevin pretended to consider her request at length, head tilting this way then that as he went hm a lot. "Well," he began in his most grudging tone, "since you promised not to touch...Ah could maybe show you some sculptures. You like big metal sculptures or just like stone or clay and stuff? 'Cause Ah mostly do metal but Ah've got some clay stuff 'round that Ah've done. And Angel's got a stone one Ah did. You know who Angel is?"

"The microwave lady," Molly said, nodding. "She was there with the X-People when they saved me from Nanny and the Robot. But Kyle said it's not like a box microwave but its like fire kinda."

She paused a moment. "Can I see ALL of them?" she said, her eyebrows raising emphasis of the word 'all.'

"Yeah, Angel's kinda made of fire. Only not literally. She can make blue flame, y'know. It's really cool to see but real, real hot and super bright." Kevin hadn't ever thought of Angel and microwaves but he guessed that was probably accurate. He associated her so much with fire itself that he'd never thought about the details of her mutation. Then again, he was usually so damn busy stuck on the details of his own he didn't have time for it.

"All of 'em?" An amused smile crossed his lips. "Well, Ah can show you all the ones Ah've got here, anyway. Ah sell 'em off and give 'em away to people a lot. And there're some in a gallery in New York. Most of the ones Ah've got here aren't finished. You seen the wood and metal angel statue out front?"

Molly nodded quickly, looking like one of those little bobblehead dolls. Her eyes widened. "OH YEAH! That one's GORGEOUS! And...well...if I don't see them all how do I know which one I will like best?" she asked with perfect innocence, peering over and up at him. "But I bet I'll like them all too! I just wanna find the BEST one I like. Do you have a best one you like?"

"Yeah, Ah got a favorite but it's not here. It's in the gallery. Ah maybe got a picture but it's not the same. And that angel statue out front Ah made with 'Vette and Angel like...two and a half years ago." Wow. Had it really been that long? Somehow everything in Kevin's live that involved Jay managed to feel both very recent and very long ago. It was a strange sort of sensation to think about how long ago it had been when Jay had disappeared. Kevin had been back at the mansion almost two years now and Jay had been gone for almost a year. For someone who had made such a strong impact on Kevin, both positively and negatively, it was funny how his absence went unnoticed by the Southerner so often. "We could take a trip to the city to the see the other ones if the Professor says it's okay. Ah dunno what the rules are 'bout you going that far without like a teacher or somethin'."

Molly perked up, her grin radiating as brightly as the lights that shone down on them. "Dude, that would be AWESOME! Maybe Doctor Beast can take us? Or umm....Mr. Bobby!" she said, her voice dropping low. "Don't let him show you snowmen, though. They're evil fractions."

Kevin could not imagine hanging out with Doc McCoy for hours but Bobby could be cool, no pun intended. Maybe he'd track the guy down and see about wrangling him as a chaperon since Kevin was happy to pass off responsibility for the tiny person to someone else. Kevin's face fell, though, as he processed the rest of what Molly had said. "Wait...evil fractions? How're fractions evil? What's a snowman got to do with fractions? Ah'm confused," he declared as he scratched the back of his head. Kevin may have been playing up his confusion just a smidge for her.

Molly tilted her head at Kevin at first, confused that he didn't know what she was talking about. "Ohhh...well, Mr. Bobby had a snowman, and he said snowmen are fractions because they have three parts. But they're also evil...cause....well, I dunno why. And he told me to punch one of their heads off cause it was talkin smack. And then I fell asleep," she said, nodding for emphasis as her hands waved about, also randomly punching the air as she explained. Falling asleep was the easiest way to stop talking about fractions. She didn't like those. Perhaps she could try that more often.

"Can we see your sculptures now?"

It was a little hard to keep up with the rate with which Molly spoke and Kevin found himself sort of blinking and processing even after she had stopped talking. How was a snowman evil? Maybe Bobby was just a little more tweaked than Kevin had thought. He didn't talk to the guy much more than a nod and a hi in passing, honestly. The question about his sculptures being processed was followed by Kevin making sure he had his gloves on and his shirt. There was another shirt still on the sand which he grabbed, shook off, and pulled on over the long sleeved tee he already had on. His hood got pulled up over his head before he stood. "Sure, c'mon tiny person. Ah'll give you the tour of the sculptures and you can see which one you like the best. And then you can compare it to which one you like best that's in the city when we go there."

Molly launched herself out of her chair, rather like a kangaroo, and readjusted the bunny hat that had nearly fallen off in the burst of excitement, one of it ears flopping over.

"Okay! Lead the way!"

This was--naturally as most things were in Molly Hayes' world--going to be awesome!