Molly and Wade and the Philosopher's Robot (Backdated)

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Molly and Wade have lunch in the art room and talk about Ron Weasley and other stuff.




The smell of markers was quite heavy in the art room. Molly sat at one of the tables, a vast array of markers and other art supplies strewn all over the table. The rough shape of a person was being drawn on a rather large piece of butcher paper. Currently it was mostly just a lot of orange and black that kind of looked like a tribble at the top and and a broken brown stick at the bottom with sparks coming out of it.

Wade carried his half of a themed lunch into the art room and sat the oranges, Cheetos, and cheese sandwiches on the table next to Molly's work area. "Hey, half-pint. What've we got going on here?"

Molly drew a large "u" from the tribble and some dots for eyes, then another tiny u underneath the dot and a big o under that.

"Ron Weasley!" she said, nodding to the picture. "Do you like him?"

Her eyes widened and her mouth fell agape. "Hey! The food matches his hair! Nifty!"

Tipping his head to the side as he picked up one of the sandwiches, Wade tipped his head to the side, squinted a bit, and then nodded. "Yeah, he's looking pretty good. What're you drawing him for?"

"Thanks! Sir Sam is letting me read Harry Potter for English! I'm on the first book. I read all of them before but we get to do homework about the books!" Molly said, never sounding so excited about school work before.

She grabbed a cheeto and popped it into her mouth.

"Have you read Harry Potter, Wademan?"

"Nope, but I gave them to Matt to read," Wade said, taking another bite of his sandwich. "You like the books?" She seemed pretty enthusiastic about them, at least. Or this Weasley character, at least.

Molly nodded, again rather like a bobble-head doll. "My daddy gave me them as a set for Christmas when I was 11!" she said. The smile faded a little and she shrugged.

"But they got burned in the fire."

"The fire?" Wade asked, sticking his sandwich in his mouth so he could work on peeling an orange with both hands. Words muffled by the bread and cheese combo he had going on between his teeth, he continued, "But they have 'em here, right? The books?"

Molly took a bite of her sandwich, idly making brown dots on the page. She waited until she was finished chewing. "Our house. My daddy did it. So Nanny and the Robot would think we were dead," she said, then made a face. "But it didn't work."

She drew the rest of the body on Ron, and added some giant ears, nodding.

"They have lots of books," she said, a note of agreement but still a bit of longing in her voice.

"Huh," Wade said, breaking the peeled orange in half and putting one part on the plate in front of Molly. He knew what he was going to be getting her for Christmas, at least, but that didn't really help him figure out how to deal with her sadness right that moment. "I'm sorry about your books, half-pint." Finishing off his sandwich, he picked up a Cheeto and balanced it on the tip of one finger. "What's your project that you're doing? You just drawing Ronnie-boy here?"

Molly nodded. "And a quote. And then I get to read a chapter out loud like a play," she said, scribbling Ron's shirt in red.

"I never got to be in a play before. Cause I wasn't good at remembering the lines."

"Lines are hard to remember," Wade said, nodding seriously. "I don't get how actors and actresses do it. But if you ever watch the blooper reels on DVDs and stuff - sometimes they can't remember their lines, either and it's pretty funny. So it's good you get to read out loud - it'll give you practice for if you ever decide you want to try out in a play later on."

Molly giggled at the word 'blooper.' She liked that word. It was funny just all by itself.

"Do you think they'd have plays here? I heard they got a stage in the ballroom, maybe they can have it there?"

"I dunno about here," Wade said, "But I know some of the mansion kids did a play in town a while back. It was Shakespeare - Keller mentioned it when we were helping with the boathouse's renovation. If you ask, though, maybe Sir Sam'd think about getting everybody together to do a play."

Molly made another face. "Shakespeare's hard to understand. But a play about other stuff could be good!" she said, the face quickly turning into a grin.

"Like um....a play...about things I dunno what about. What other plays are there other than Shakespeare?"

"Um..." Wade stalled for a minute because seriously - English literature wasn't exactly his strong point. Give him a target and a weapon of some sort and he was pretty sure he could figure out how to maim the target. "I dunno - that's a question for Sir Sam, I think. There's... plays about other things, though. I know there definitely are. Modern stuff that doesn't have weird words and sentence structure in it."

Molly's eyes widened. "OH! Maybe a MUSICAL! There could be singing! Like Grease! You know somebody made Harry Potter a musical play? It was awesome! It's on Youtube! Or maybe I could write a play! Like...a Batman play!"

Wade laughed. "You can do anything you want, half-pint. I'm pretty sure, as long as it's educational, none of the teachers here are going to tell you 'no' when you're that enthusiastic about something."

Molly hopped up with her marker in hand. "NIFTY! I'm gonna write a play about Batman. Can you be Batman when I write it? And...and I can be Robin! But the girl one not the boy cause I'd have to cut my hair and I like my hair. And maybe the green haired lady could be the Joker and Callie can be Poison Ivy and um...um..." she blinked, frowning.

"I don't think the Professor would like being Alfred. Even if Alfred is super cool."

"Dude, Alfred is awesome. Just for laughs, you should make Kyle be Alfred. Can you imagine him trying to do a British accent? We'd have to make him be a special Alfred who didn't have to wear shoes, though. Huh." Wade considered the logistics of that for a moment, then ate another Cheeto before continuing, "I think Callie'd make a good Poison Ivy. I can be Batman, if you want me to be. Oh, hey - Jubes would be a good Catwoman."

"He could be Alfred on vacation? Or in Japan? Don't you have to take off your shoes?" Molly said, then tilted her head.

"Who's Jubilee again?"

"She's a friend of mine from in the city - lives in the same building as Marie-Ange," Wade said, smiling. "And yeah, I think Alfred in Japan would be excellent."

"Ohhh. Mary Angie could be Batgirl!" Molly said, the little wheels in her head turning at the thought. "And Mr. Bobby could be Mr. Freeze and Matt could be Nightwing. But what about the Penguin..." she said, tapping her chin.

"Doug," Wade said without hesitation. "Doug should definitely be the Penguin. Put him in a suit and make him waddle around a bit - that'd be hilarious. I can probably bribe him with food to do it, too."

Molly grinned. "That would be cool!" she said as she sat back down and started to draw a batman symbol on Ron's shirt.

"I wonder if they have any costumes from Halloween we can use?"

Wade just shrugged. "Dunno - we can ask. Though considering what a fiasco Halloween turned out to be, we might want to just start from scratch..." He grinned and shook his head. "C'mon - eat up. What else do you have to do for your project? Or is coloring this guy here it?"

"Oh...cause of the weird stuff...." Molly said, nodding a little. She still remembered some parts but not all of it.

"I get to read stuff aloud and make the dude...then we're gonna do more stuff on the next book. Sir Sam says I might get to write a chapter like I wanna write it and stuff."

She scribbled a little bit of pink on Ron's cheeks.

"So...what do you think they're gonna do for Thanksgiving?"

"Probably cook a turkey," Wade said. "And make stuffing. And cranberry... sauce? Gel? What is that stuff that comes out of a can and is like. Jello, but not? Cranberry something. And a bunch of other stuff - why, what do you want to do for Thanksgiving?"

"My mom makes real cranberry stuff...she gets real cranberries and makes stuff with them. She likes organic stuff. My daddy pretends to go to the kitchen and get a drink but he puts it in his mouth and spits it out into the garbage can. He's sneaky," Molly said, beaming wryly.

She shrugged, looking down. "I dunno. My mom and daddy can't come. I've never had a Thanksgiving without them. Or my birthday..." she said, then added quietly. "Or Christmas."

"I'm sorry, half-pint," Wade said, an odd note of sincerity creeping into his voice. "I know that's rough. But we'll just have to see what we can do for the holidays here, maybe make some different traditions and stuff. Though I promise, I'll try and figure out how to make that cranberry stuff with real cranberries. I might have to con someone else into making it, though, since I'm not sure I can be trusted with berries and a stove."

Molly tilted her head, then suddenly raised her hand. "Oooh! Oooh! I know how to do it. Can I do it? Someone can watch me and I won't get burned cause...y'know...Supergirl!" she said, flexing her muscles. L

Laughing, Wade reached over and tugged at the edge of Molly's hat. "We'll see, half-pint. Let's work on getting your project wrapped up and finishing lunch first, though. And I heard they're gonna try and release that boxing robot movie we saw on DVD in time for Christmas, though I'm not sure they'll manage. Made me think of some other stuff they might be releasing in the theaters around that time. How do you feel about a holiday movie... thing?"

"Like to go see?" Molly said. "My mom and daddy usually took me to see plays and stuff...about like...Scrooge."

Falling silent a moment, she tilted her head.

"Hey! Do you think Doctor Beast could make a robot?"

Wade paused for a moment, head tipped to the side, and said, "Yeah, I think he could. You asked that when we had pizza with everybody after the movie, too."

Molly blinked at him, giving him a funny look. "I did?" she said, looking entirely confused before she shrugged and grinned.

"Dude it'd be a cool robot. Y'think?"

"Yeah, totally," Wade said, nodding as he popped a piece of orange in his mouth. "The coolest." He filed that odd little exchange away, though, and made a mental note to keep a closer eye on Molly. It wasn't a huge deal, but that definitely seemed like something she should remember, since she'd been so excited about it at the time.

"I'm gonna draw it now..." Molly said as she rolled up Ron very neatly and put a rubberband around him.

"I think I shall name him...Super Transformer Voltronicus!"

Grabbing the markers, she started to make an outline, occasionally glancing over at Wademan to see if he wanted to help out. It was fun when they had lunch together.