xp_logs | Molly and Kyle: Doppelgangers (Backdated)

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After her run in with evil Professor Kyle Slenderman, Molly decides to confront her fears by going to see the real Kyle.

It was a half an hour before class was to start when Molly stood
outside Kyle's office door. She stood there for at least a minute or
so before she finally knocked on the door. Part of her hoped maybe he
wasn't there. But then she'd still have to go to class. And that was
bad, maybe.

Kyle knew who it was before the knock - but identifying your students
by smell was, frankly, pretty goddamn creepy at times, and plus, it
was hard to tell if someone hanging outside the door was just hanging
out, or waiting for him. So he waited for the knock, and then called
back "Yo, it's open!" and pushed the pile of homework he'd been
grading away.

Molly almost jumped when Kyle spoke up. She took a moment, then
another, then slowly opened up the door and shuffled in. Kyle was
across the room, and she stood by the door for a little while.

"Hello um...Mr. Gibney," she said.

It was weird cause she normally just called him Kyle. But after the
other stuff she wasn't sure. She fiddled with the tassels on her hat.
There were a lot, since it was a lion hat. It was the mane and stuff.
Even if it was a boy lion who had a mane it made her feel powerful.

She wasn't sure what to do about the next part either.

Kyle's eyebrows went up, and he scratched behind one ear. "Uh. Mols,
maybe you forgot.." They'd all gotten that memo - she didn't remember
much of anything since before Genosha. "We all talked about the Mister
Gibney thing, back in September. It's cool if you keep calling me
Kyle, or whatever you're comfortable with, but my dad's Mister Gibney.
He sub taught for me in November, let you guys watch a movie..."

"Oh..." Molly said, blinking. That wasn't familiar at all. She bit her lip.

"Sorry, I did forget."

The not remembering thing was getting to be frustrating. Like she'd
taken a vacation and someone else lived her life. But it was hers. She
was glad, and not glad when she sometimes she could remember bits, if
they reminded her of other bits.

"Can I...talk to you about something?"

"Sure ask away" Kyle said, easily. "And don't worry about the
forgetting. I still can't get Hope to call me anything else half the
time. If you want, I'll see if my dad'll send me copies of some of the
baby pictures he had of me, so you can at least remember that part.
Apparently he showed you guys the picture of me chewing on the kitchen
table when I was like, a year old."

The thought brought with it a light smile from Molly, a patch of
brightness against her cloudy contemplation.

"Yes please," she said, fidgeting with her coat. She then swallowed,
and continued to fidget. She did it when she was nervous.

"I saw you. When the Slendermen took us they made me see
you....And...you were mean. And you called me things," she said. She
looked down, then forced herself to look up, taking a breath.

"But I knew it wasn't you and...and I knew I had to see you
cause....cause otherwise I'd think of evil you and be scared and I
didn't wanna hide in the closet anymore cause hiding's bad and I
wanted to be brave so I wouldn't be scared...so...um...Hi," she said,
then gave a small wave.

"Hold on, okay, so... you guys got kidnapped by Slendermen, which
okay, is still weird to me, and one of them turned into me? And I was
a jerk?" Kyle asked, making sure he had the right idea of things.
"And so you're coming by to say hi, so that you know you can?" Seemed
like solid reasoning to him. "Cool. You want me to apologize for
jerk-face slenderman me? Because I can, if it'll help."

Molly blinked. "What? No!" she said, quickly shaking her head.

"I wanted to see you to remind me that you're actually nice and not
the bad guy. Cause the bad guy said bad things not you so...you don't
have to say sorry cause you're not the bad guy...and...." she made a
face. This was awkward.

"Kay. Cause you know, evil dude with my face, I feel bad." Kyle
explained. "Unless he had an uglier face than me, or like, really
gross hair or something. Then I'm gonna say he deserves to have bad
hair." It made sense in his head at least.

"Well...you had shark teeth. And when you were being really mean I
thought maybe you were possessed or not you cause your face started
getting....weird," Molly said, curling her nose. "So I threw a desk at
you."

She paused, then frowned and threw up her hands, quickly adding, "Not
that I throw desks at people all the time...but I figured you'd heal?"

Kyle frowned a for a second, and then held up a hand. "Here, hold on."
He opened his desk, and pulled out a sheet of lined paper and a
fat-tipped marker. A few seconds - and some painstaking work to make
it legible - and he presented Molly with the paper. "Okay, one
certificate that says that if I'm ever evil, possessed or grow shark
teeth on my face, you are totally allowed to throw a desk at me and
knock me out."

Taking the note, Molly stared down at it for a moment or two then
glanced back up.

"Oh. Um....thanks," she said uncertainly, with a confused smile. It
did make her feel a little better, though.

"Does that happen a lot?"

"Only just the one time, really, but hey, I figure it's fair, right? I
mean, if I had shark teeth, I'd want you to throw a desk at me." Kyle
said. "I mean, geez, first shark teeth, then I'd go all
call-me-Ishmael crazy and try to get you kids to read Moby Dick and
trust me, ~no one wants that~. You don't, I don't, your classmates
don't, nobody does."

Molly tilted her head.

"Why not? Isn't it about a detective?"

"It's about a dude obsessed with a whale, it's two-thousand pages and
half of them are about boats, whales or harpoons." Kyle said, with a
amused grin. "But Sherlock Holmes? And Watson? The books they're
originally in are from the same time, like 1890 or something. If you
want detectives, that's probably your best bet."

Molly made a face. "No, I don't think I'd like the whale book," she
said before brightening.

"Isn't there a movie with Sherlock Holmes? He's like Batman! Can we
read that in class?"

"Oh there's -so- many movies with him, you have no idea, but I think I
know the one you mean. There's some tv shows too." Kyle'd managed to
watch most of Sherlock, even before Dori had told him it was big on
tumblr, whatever that was. "I need to give you guys some genre lit
sometime closer to the end of the year, so yeah. We can totally do
Sherlock. We'll do some Doyle - he's the guy who wrote the Sherlock
Holmes stories, we'll probably read some Poe - he wrote a poem you
probably've heard, about a raven..."

Tilting her head, Molly thought about it. "I know about the Teen
Titans?" she offered helpfully.

"Right, the episode where Cyborg and Beast Boy go into Raven's mind,
it's called Nevermore because of that poem." Kyle explained.

A light bulb went off. "Oh!" Molly said.

"Yes! I would also like to read about that. Does the bird have magic powers?"

Kyle shrugged. "Not really, but it is a creepy bird. That's Poe's
thing, creepy literature. He's famous for it. So we'll be reading a
little bit from a bunch of different kinds of novels - different
genres, and then I'll probably have you guys write an essay on like, a
kind of genre and it's themes."

Molly got quiet, spacing out a bit at the prospect of writing things.
It took her a little while to commit to doing something and
understanding it, but the teachers were nice and patient and usually
got through to helping her figure it out.

"Do we have to do creepy stuff right now?"

She had real life creepy and that was enough for her for awhile.

"Heck no. You've got plenty of time before I dump Poe on you guys."
Kyle said. He had noticed the concerned and distant expression on
Molly's face. "I want to make sure you guys are set on actually you
know, the basics of writing essays before I assign one for real, even
if they're short essays. So we'll have a couple of days each week
where you guys are going to do some writing in class. It'll be fun,
you get to pick your own topics, like, how awesome are hats, or how
weird your teacher is because he won't wear shoes."

"That's not weird," Molly offered helpfully. "You said you have pointy
toes so you need to breathe, right?"

She paused, blinking.

"Did I remember something?"

"Pretty sure you did." Kyle said, with a grin. "My feet hate shoes,
yeah, because of the claws." He picked up one foot and wiggled it in
Molly's direction. "Maybe I'll write an example one for you guys,
about why I hate shoes so much." It wasn't a -bad- simple essay
topic, he thought. Setup a thesis, supporting facts, and a conclusion,
and it came with the added bonus of being funny. "or like, why tacos
are the best food."

Molly giggled. "Tacos are pretty awesome. I also like pancakes!"

She tilted her head. "What about flip flops?"

"See, essay topic right there. Pancakes are the best breakfast is your
thesis, you write two or three paragraphs on why, close it out, and
there you go." Kyle said. "And I dig flip flops but my feet rip them
up, so I usually just don't bother. I've got those ripped up sneakers
if I really gotta wear shoes. Or my uniform boots, I guess."

"Can I do it for extra credit?" Molly said. Unless they had to write
about it for actual actual class which would be neat too!

She glanced down at his feet and smiled. "I like your feet. They
remind me of Hobbit feet but way cooler."

"Hobbits are probably the only dudes besides Hank with hairier feet
than me." He said, and then Kyle thought about the rest of it for a
few seconds, and then held up a 'hang on a second' finger to flip his
tablet over to the spreadsheet-webpage-thing that held grades. "You
know, how do you feel about doing some, well extra credit stuff with a
tutor? Because, well, you know, the brain holes and all... " They'd
told her teachers she might experience both some learning gaps and
possibly have fewer issues with retention in the future. "Your quiz
and homework grades are picking up. Might be worth thinking about?"

Glancing down, Molly thought about it a moment. She was trying really
hard herself to remember all the school stuff but all the stuff she
remembered was before, and everyone else knew all this other stuff in
school now. It made her feel really behind. But not in this class.

"I...thought I was doing good in English? I like reading."

"You are." Kyle said gently. "That's why I think it might be helpful
to see if you can catch up more? See if we can get you over any bumpy
places." He scratched at his head and tried to figure out how to
explain this. "Okay, so you know I went here for school, right? So
the year I came here, I'd missed almost a year of school. So the
Professor got me some extra help to smooth things out. Made me feel
like I totally had a handle on the stuff I knew I had, and made the
other stuff a lot easier. Meant I got B's and C's in math for the
first time ever."

"So..." Molly said, tilting her head. "It's like...when the X-People
wear uniforms to protect them from stuff even when they got powers? It
makes it better?"

The metaphor wasn't exact, but then, it didn't need to be. "Yep. Just
like that. And it means that we can see where you need some help for
reals, and where you don't need it anymore. Maybe you end up with a
math tutor instead of a english tutor, maybe you just get some help on
reading retention rate. Might be a good time to re-evaluate and see
what you need." Kyle explained.

Glancing over at the stuff on Kyle's desk, Molly nodded. "Okay!" she
said with a smile.

"I wanna be an X-Man so if I get smarter then maybe I can graduate on
time and they can let me on the team!"

Kyle wasn't quite sure how he was supposed to answer that - was it

"Sure, you can do that." but then risk her not catching up? Or "We'll
see" which he knew really really well was adult for "Yeah, not so
much." Either way, buckets of awkward. He opted for a neutral
"Cool." and a head nod. "So, how about I see who is free - there's a
couple folks who are doing the college thing and have some extra time,
and we'll figure stuff out, maybe like, same time next week?"

Molly didn't really notice his struggle, more focused on thinking
about the learning part. It wasn't that she didn't like learning, she
just liked playing more. But she was gonna try. Cause superheroes
tried. So she had to try too.

"Kay!" she said.

"Thank you, Mr. Kyle."

"No problem. I'll pop you an email or leave you a note on your door if
things get hinky and I can't figure out who's up for tutoring." Kyle
said.

Confusion glimmered across Molly's face when he said 'hinky' and even
a bit of embarrassment as she covered her mouth and tried not to
giggle before coughing.

"Okay."

Kyle waited until Molly had headed to her next class before laughing
himself -and making a mental note to stop using the word 'hinky'
around teenagers.