Molly, Namor, Haller, & Cecilia: Truth, Justice, and the Attilan Way

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While out running errands with Haller and Cecilia, Molly runs into a man in trouble and tries to help using her Princess Powerful persona. Namor intervenes. Things don't go well.


Summer was definitely upon them; shaded parking in Salem Center was becoming difficult to come by. Jim glanced at his watch. "Okay, I think the post office closes at 4. That gives us a little time to pick up whatever you need."

"My my, Mr. Haller. What a coy way to ask me what exactly is that I need." Cecilia grinned, pushing her sunglasses down from the top of her head. "Shouldn't take long, though." She glanced around at the people milling about - apparently they weren't the only group of people to decide it was the perfect day for errands. "Don't let me forget I need to buy a bottle of wine, too. I nabbed one from Wade and need to replace it before he notices."

Molly made a face. Wine didn't sound very good. She smelled it once and it just smelled like something went bad. She didn't know why people liked it...okay, she did, cause they got drunk, but you still had to drink spoiled grapes.

"And then the comic book store?" She wanted to catch up on Teen Titans.

The counselor checked his phone to ensure his battery wasn't on its last legs. All good. "Actually you can go on ahead," he said, taking pity on the girl. The concept of a post office visit wasn't exactly thrilling even when you had a legitimate errand. There was no need for Molly to suffer, too. "We'll come find you when we've gotten Dr. Reyes' mystery item. Text me if you need anything, okay?"

"Kay! Thanks!" Molly said excitedly as she put in her headphones and dashed down the sidewalk. She had memorized the way to the comic book store a long time ago.

Cecilia had to laugh as she watched Molly scamper off. She couldn't recall ever being so enthusiastic about anything at that age. By that point, she was just quiet and intense. "Come on," she turned her head to look at Haller. "Time for your primer on Puerto Rican junk food."

Jim turned from Molly's retreat to raise an eyebrow at her. "Oh, we're hitting the international foods place?" Well, she had mentioned some kind of care package. It had been a while since he'd been to the place. Or anywhere professionally unnecessary, for that matter. "Sure," Jim replied, pocketing his phone. "I guess I can expand my culinary horizons. And indulge a dolma craving."

~X~

Molly headed down a side street. It was the quickest way and it had less traffic and it also had a few neat stores she could gawk at along the way. One had hair dye too, and she had to remember to tell Rachel. Maybe they could dye all her hair blue some time (she didn't think she'd really go for that one but maybe!).

The sound of yelling caught her attention. This area was quieter, and people usually stuck to the main roads. The yelling sounded scared, and other people yelled too, but they were less scared. Trouble. Good thing she had brought her backpack.

It didn't take long to change, mainly just to take off her hat and add her pink wig and her mask and jacket. She didn't have time to add the rest. Soon she was sprinting for where the yelling was. It was daytime but bad guys didn't just operate during the night.

In truth, these bad guys had been operating throughout the night and then some: a rowdy party had turned into late night bar hops. A murkily-remembered slew of continued vices set what was now this scene in a side-alley. There two men standing. One, trim and a little disheveled in a hoodie, stood as a jeering sentinel as the second, bigger and more muscled in a sweaty tank top, unsteadily kicked and shouted at a smaller crouched figure.

"Ha! Who's the big man now? Not so brave when there's no one around!" The glazed, self-congratulating expression in the thug's eyes telegraphed his previous night's festivities as much as the equally matched swagger and incoordination in his blows. A bulge along his pant-line occasionally betrayed a peak of sleek, grey metal. "Ha! Scrub!"

Princess Powerful had waited for few moments, to listen and make sure that it wasn't just people play fighting. But the man on the ground was making noises like he was in pain, so it didn't sound like they were playing. So that meant it was time to spring into action. And Molly literally did spring, jumping out of the alley in her jacket and her wig and mask.

"Hey! Let him go! Or you'll be sorry!" she said. She didn't put her hands on her hips, though, cause that was corny.

The man in the hoodie wasn't expecting to see what he saw when he turned at the sound of a new voice, and for a second, he wondered if he hadn't done enough to shake off his earlier high. "Kid, are you for real?" He blinked and rubbed his eyes, then snorted when he realized she was still standing there. "What the hell do you think this is, The Powerpuff Girls? Beat it."

Making a face, Molly folded her arms. "No," she said, trying to sound stern after they laughed at her."You should leave, or I'll make you leave." She curled her nose.

"Also, you stink...like....literally. Ew."

Molly was, perhaps, exaggerating, but the nearest person to the group of four was downwind and more involved with the telephone in his hands than the unwashed masses. Not that Namor ever expected to be. Many things, like street-corner art and restaurants under two stars, were... best to be appreciated from afar and never touched. One must keep to the standards they boast.

However, a slurred yell of "What the fuck, Sean. Tell this dipshit it is past her bedtime," did punctuate the Attilan Royal's imperial bubble. He had his own errands in the Salem Center, but it simply would not do to encourage that sort of vulgar behavior in public.

What Namor did not expect as he rounded the corner to investigate, however, was a certain bewigged minor.

"Dude, fuck off." The hoodie-clad man shoved his friend, cast a glance at the man they were abusing and then returned his attention to the pint-sized pipsqueak who didn't know well enough to leave men to their business. God, he was still too high for this shit. "Go home, junior. Scram. Somewhere there's a kitten you can save from a tree or some shit." Just to demonstrate he was serious, he took a menacing step toward her.

"Excuse me?" Molly said, folding her arms. She didn't move when the guy did, not afraid of him in the slightest. He didn't control a giant lizard or have teeth in his hands OR all the way around his face. She'd seen a lot worse.

She was also starting to get mad, and showed by clenching her fists down by her sides as she closed the distance and looked up at the tall guy with a sneer. "No."

If he tried anything he was gonna find himself in the dumpster nearby....from all the way across the street. Jerk.

The unfortunate target of the mens' wrath was could barely see what was happening. His eyes were swelling shut, and he was almost certain it was because his nose was broken. Even so, he could make out the small figure coming to intervene — and, even through his reddening vision, a flash of purple from its eyes.

But if that wasn't enough, there was then a new voice: sharp, disapprovingly harsh, and loud enough to hurry along any developing hangovers. Or, at least, crash any buzz with how commanding it was. "Miss Hayes."

Molly froze, then spun around, blinking. Namor. Namor? Wait, how did he know? Well, maybe if superheroes lived with people they knew then they knew sometimes but still. "Dude!" she whispered. "You're totally blowing my cover!"

At the sound of another stranger, the larger man finally turned his attention from the bruised man laying on the floor. "Who the fuck are you?" He spat at Namor, taking in the young guy's preppie light dress and seemingly prim attitude. "What the fuck is this shit? Go home."

"They were hurting that guy! His face is all swollen! I was helping! Look! " Molly said, instinctively pushing past Namor to try to show him the guy on the floor.

"That one guy's also an asshat." She learned that one from Wademan.

Namor didn't look, but his crisp, frigid "Quiet" sobered the mood considerably. He grabbed Molly's shoulders lightly as she pushed past to make sure she was paying attention. "They likely deserve to be punched squarely in the face, but so do most people. They are not worth the time."

Molly blinked, surprised at the way he spoke to her. Most of the adults never did that. Though they treated her like a kid they at least were nice about it. What he said made her not want to stay quiet, because he was wrong. She glared up at him, even though he towered over her like a giant, wing-footed jerk.

"If they only say mean things...maybe it's good to walk away....but those are just words. They hurt someone, and they were gonna hurt him more. I'm not gonna leave him here to keep getting beaten up," she said with frustration, pulling away from him to head for the guy.

They were always trying to protect her, but they never could. She usually had to protect herself. Why wouldn't she protect others too?

During this exchange, the two thugs had quite enough. The larger man, positioning himself for a punch behind Namor, was bristling with transferred rage. "Don't you fucking ignore me!"

Molly didn't get far. Namor's grip was as rigid as the steel in his eyes. "What was your plan here? Punch someone and draw the police? Destroy something in pub—"

His rhetoric was cut short as the tank top aggressor lurched Namor's shoulder in an attempt to spin his around. The effect, somewhat successful, also managed to shake what precarious balance the other man already had.

Namor's reaction was quick. By the time the larger man had started to fall, the Attilani used the transferred momentum to roll off the pull and lock his hand in a vice-like grip around his opponent's wrist.

"You should let the adults finish," Namor stated acidly.

"Hey!" The other man hovered by the victim, clearly uncertain how to respond to this development. In a rare flash of lucidity, he attempted an approach other than knee-jerk violence. "What are you, the babysitter?" he demanded. "Take your own advice and fuck off!"

"I believe," Namor said slowly and in his best disappointed tone, "What you meant to say is that you two were going to leave Miss Hayes, myself, and that sorry man over there alone." He casually twisted the wrist he was holding hostage, punctuating the statement with an undignified yelp from the first of the two thugs. "I believe your friend agrees."

The entrapped man's face was going red as much from humiliation of being so thoroughly disabled as from having his joint introduced to a new and exciting range of motion. Moreso when his assailant casually tossed him like a sack of laundry and started to turn away before he even hit the ground. The man stumbled to the ground, panting as circulation returned to his hand and the blood pounded in his head.

As physically one-sided as this was and as dangerous as the stranger had proven to be, the preppie dipshit's casual disrespect of his friend was the last straw. He'd kept his distance while Namor still had the other man in a bind, but the moment he released it the hoodied man flung him at the Attilani, rushing for his partially exposed back.

But his attempt was quickly dismantled by a 90-pound girl tackling him with the surprising force of a linebacker, knocking him off his feet. As the man coughed and gasped for air, Molly climbed off of him and pointed at the ground.

"Stay down, please!" Man, some people were stubborn.

Namor stared at the felled thug in disappointment. The scene was spiraling: two men on a floor, a girl in a wig that screamed "look at me," and a victim who was still balled pitifully. He sighed, refocusing that disappointment on Molly. "This is what happens when you try to help." At this, he gripped Molly's shoulders securely. "You may never forgive me, but you need an intervention and I am growing tired of this circus."

And with that, the two of them lifted off into the air. A pair of ankle wings poked out from Namor's slacks, beating softly.

The assailant Molly had not recently introduced to the pavement goggled at the two strangers. Being interrupted by a girl in the wig had been ridiculous. Some preppie appearing out of nowhere and completely incapacitating him had been humiliating. But the preppie grabbing the girl and lifting them both off the ground? Was there a word for that? What the fuck was going on?

There was one way to end this. The gun was still in his waistband. He drew it.

~X~

"What constitutes Puerto Rican junk food, anyway?" Jim asked as he and Cecilia wound their way towards the grocery. Walking around town with a peer felt . . . odd. He couldn't recall the last time he'd done so without being dragged by the other party, even for overlapping errands. Obviously the social withdrawal had been more serious than he'd realized.

"Plantain chips and chicarrones on the savory side." Cecilia swatted a gnat away from her arm. "Dulce de ajonjolí, which is like this sesame seed bar that's just beyond this world. And lots of candies with guava paste, which I'm not crazy about, but my brother's really into for whatever reason." She glanced at him as they waited for the light to cross the street. "You have any siblings?"

"No. I didn't have much experience with a nuclear family." Jim hit the Walk button on the signal despite his long-held belief all such buttons served as nothing more than a psychological ploy. "What's your brother's name? Older or younger?"

"Miguel. He's older." Not that Cecilia was entirely sure what the threshold was. "He was supposed to be here in February, but the Army canceled his leave indefinitely for whatever reason." She shrugged, trying not to show how much this actually bothered her. "Who knows why they do what they do."

"The problem with being good at your job is that other people will see you're good at your job," Jim said sympathetically. The light began to emitting a series of tweets, signaling they were now permitted to cross. "So you're getting stuff for him?"

"Yep. Watch out." Cecilia put her hand out to stop Haller from being run over by a disobedient cyclist. "I hate those guys," she muttered. "Why did you come to town?"

"Mailing supplies for the school and personal nicotine dependence." Jim wondered what it was about nice weather and spandex that instilled an attitude of Above the Law. "And something to tell Lorna when she asks me when I last left the building. You're my witness, by the way."

"Oh boy." Cecilia lowered her chin and raised her eyebrows. "And when was the last time you left the building?"

"I go into the city all the time, but apparently work and therapy don't count." A hint of weary bitterness crept into the telepath's voice. "Shockingly, the more people I feel like I have in my head the less I want to be around real ones."

"Hm. I guess I get that, although it's not like I can fig—" A loud pop echoed through the air, stopping Cecilia in her tracks. She knew that sound. She'd grown up on that sound. But she'd never have expected it here.

"Gun," she told Haller, her eyes wider than normal. "That's a gun." She looked around, scanning to see if anyone was fleeing in panic. It didn't look that way. And then something occurred to her. "Molly?" She shouted.

Jim froze. Whether Cecilia's assessment was correct or not -- of which he had little doubt, considering her history -- the familiar "bad feeling" that was part psychic intuition and part teeth-grinding experience uncoiled in the pit of his stomach. His telepathy cracked across the astral plane like a whip.

"Molly!"

~X~ ​

The shot went wide. If this were a movie, someone would offer the shooter a quip about how he'd make an excellent stormtrooper, but no one in the alleyway was really concerned about trope protocol as the shot was both jarring and loud. So very loud. Hoodie thug was cursing violently, but his trigger happy friend was staring blanking at the gun, arms now jelly. Even Namor winced at the sound, dipping violently in the air before he could regain control.

"Gugh," Molly said, her stomach twisty and turny like she was gonna throw up. She didn't much like flying, except when Mr. Worthington did it, and especially when they were about to land abruptly. It made her dizzy, and nervous, even if it didn't matter if she hit the ground.

"I forgot, are you unsquishable too? Maybe we should land so you don't get shot." She'd rather be mad at him and him be alive so she was gonna not be mad at the moment until they were back somewhere solid.

"I..." His words were unsteady, calm shattered, "I... the impudence." They landed unsteadily and Namor -- attention completely gone from Molly now -- turned to face the shooter. He was turning redder by the second. "You are in for a world of pain."

Molly's eyes widened, hoping his head wasn't gonna explode. It looked close. "Um....that might be bad." With the gun added now there was probably gonna be cops.

All she wanted was just to rescue the dude, then there had to be a gun, and a Namor. Superman never had this problem.

"Sean, are you retarded? What are you doing?" blurted the thinner man. Something about a gunshot was sobering him an alarming rate, and it was beginning to dawn on him that the situation might be worse than just a story the two of them never told their friends.

"H-he's a mutie," his friend said, white-faced. "He threatened me! You're my witness!" He brought the gun up again, but it was harder now that he had Namor's undivided attention. His arms shook.

"You beat up a guy first," Molly said, blinking. "Were you gonna hurt the guy with your gun?" She swallowed, deciding to use words instead of fists.

"We were flying away. You're just afraid. And drunk," she said, making a face, then held up her hands.

"So...you should put the gun down, please. Cause..otherwise you'll make it worse. And it's really worse already. And if you kill people accidentally then you'll go to jail. Okay? So....gun down? Okay?"

"Shut up!" the gunman snapped, barely looking at her. Namor was an easier target on the ground, but also far more intimidating. "Back off, mutie!" he commanded, gun trembling. "Fuck off or the next one's going in your face!"

Where Molly had found her diplomacy, Namor had lost his. The look in his eyes made him look like the poster child for any mutant smear campaign. He advanced slowly on Sean, muscles tight in rage and hands balled into fists. "You have five seconds to put that toy away before I knock you through that wall. Four..."

The seconds clicked away as the two stared at each other, Namor closing the distance. On two he lunged — a blur to the gunman's still muddy senses — in both a smart attempt to disarm the gun and, frankly, a stupid decision to channel his rage at being shot at into violence.

As fast as Namor moved, his imminent victim's adrenalin and terror matched it. His firearm was already level, and a single twitch of a finger took so much less effort than a lunge. Namor was almost on top of him; point-blank range. For the second time, the gun went off.

Both Attilani and bullet slammed against an invisible barrier. It was brief, no more than an eyeblink, but enough to interrupt the momentum of both. Almost simultaneously, the gun in Sean's hands imploded like a can in the depths of the ocean. The gunman shrieked as the end of his trigger finger cracked with it.

Unseen pressure flooded the alley, immediately followed by its cause. Namor's expression had been enraged, but Haller's was murderous. A slate-grey gaze took in the student, the Attilani, the bleeding victim on the ground, and came to all the conclusion they needed. Barely-restrained telekinesis rattling the alley around them, Jack turned to the two terrified men and narrowed his eyes.

The hapless assailants flew into the street, propelled by an invisible force that made absolutely no effort to be gentle. The thinner one cried out as his ankle twisted and fractured on impact. The other, hand still clenched around a gun as useful as a wad of tin foil, came down hard on his side. Jack strode into the mouth of the alley and uttered only one word:

"Leave."

That was incentive enough. With nothing barring their way and no idea how many mutants might now be arriving, the two men scrambled to their feet and ran as fast as their injuries allowed.

Assured the threat was over, the counselor turned back to Molly and Namor. The grey in his eyes receded to their normal blue and brown, but Jim's expression was only marginally less intense than his alter's. Looking from Molly to Namor and back again he asked, very quietly, "What is going on?"

Cecilia glanced at Haller, trying to contain her discomfort that he had that power in him. Then she cast a quick look at Molly, pausing at her hair before shooting a piercing glare at Namor. "You're an idiot."

Still, she knew there'd be time for more disdain later, and so Cecilia went to where she'd be more useful: The victim on the ground. "Sir?" She darted toward him, then crouched over him to examine his injuries. "What hurts? How are you feeling?" She'd learned not to bother asking whether victims were okay. ​ Namor had been given a moment to collect himself, but that did little to temper the look of indignation he gave Cecelia's remark. Still. Deep breath. Other matters. Another cleansing breath.

He turned to Haller, bent over and still breathing heavily, "Miss Hayes..."

"Was trying to help the guy," Molly said with a frown, folding her arms. She was still mad at him. "These guys were beating him up, a lot. And I didn't want people to know who I was just in case I had to use my powers so I put on my wig and stuff. And then Namor saw me and totally told them my secret identity and then they got mad at him cause he was acting like Namor. I just wanted to get the guy away but then one of the guys tried to attack Namor and I tackled him and Namor's like...." Her voice dropped unnaturally low and the strutted around, back extremely rigid, looking around with her head held high.

"'You may never forgive me...'and then 'something about a circus' and then he tried to fly away but then the guy freaked out and had a gun. A gun! And he shot at us. And so Namor got REALLY REALLY mad and tried to beat him up I tried to stop it...like with talking....then Namor fought the guy and then you showed up." Every ounce of the story was filled with waving hands and different expressions to match.

She ended it by folding her arms again and looking at the ground. "I just wanted to help."

Jim stared at her. His brain had heard the words, but it was having trouble processing them. He noticed now that she was in a wig and mask, and that raised a whole host of questions. Questions he suspected were not going to have good answers. And that wasn't even counting Namor and what had unmistakably been an attempted assault.

"We need to talk about this somewhere else," the counselor said at last. "You too, Namor. We need to get out of here." He turned towards Cecilia and the victim. "Dr. Reyes, that man . . ?"

Cecilia shushed Haller rather dismissively as she gently lifted the man's shirt. She hadn't really been listening to Molly's story, but the idea of a masked teenager running off to her own to fight crime sounded bizarrely stupid, even for Xavier's. She was dying to know how she got the idea, almost as much as she yearned to jab Namor's arm with a hypodermic needle.

"You're going to be all right," she reassured the man in front of her after a brief examination. "I'm betting broken nose and bruised ribs, if that. Nothing life-threatening. Although, you may—you should see a doctor." She stuck two fingers on the man's neck to take his pulse. "And tell them," she said carefully, her eyes fixed on her watch, "that you got into a fight."

The battered man squinted up at her. His vision was obstructed, but not enough to keep him from noticing how attractive she was. After being assaulted, saved, and witnessing a man fly, somehow finding himself being treated by a beautiful woman was the ultimate moment of surreality.

"What just happened?" he asked, words slightly slurred by a puffing lip. He clearly didn't mean the beating.

Oh, madre de Dios, now Cecilia was going to have to lie to keep order in Westchester. Unable to help herself, she glanced over her shoulder to shoot a look at Haller. (Namor and Molly she pointedly ignored.)

"You are drunk," the woman finally said, since she didn't have much reason to believe it wasn't true. "You got into a fight with two other drunks." She pushed back a lock of his hair to see if he'd got a cut anywhere on his forehead. At least he wasn't bleeding too badly. "This stern man, his cocky ward and their spunky-to-a-fault friend saved you in their own stunningly misguided way." She couldn't resist the dig.

"Point is, they wanted to help you. And they did." She shrugged and smiled. "And now I'm helping you. And that's what's important. That's all that's important."

The man blinked, then nodded slowly. She hadn't said anything about the dark-haired man levitating, or the purple flash he swore he'd seen from the girl, or whatever the hell had made the other men leave. That had to be intentional. The message was clear: We both know what you saw, but the situation turned out for the best. Please don't say anything that could complicate our lives.

She needn't have worried. They might be mutants, but they'd helped him. They didn't deserve to get in trouble for that. Still, this was a rare opportunity. He couldn't help himself.

"If I was at a bar this early," the man ventured, "can I at least have gotten your number? You know . . . for authenticity?"

That was it. Cecilia was going to smother Namor with a pillow in his sleep. If Haller was lucky, he'd only be missing one kidney after he woke up. And she'd come up with some creative suitable punishment for Molly when she wasn't trying to cover her inner rage with a reassuring smile.

"Of course," she said, trying not to let any of her inner tension come to the surface. "Where's your phone? No, here, let me get it." Truth be told, when she looked past the bloody nose and black eye, he wasn't so bad-looking. But this was still awful.

Jim winced. He'd heard all of that, and was well aware he now owed Cecilia something expensive for all this. Talk about taking one for the team.

The telepath pinched the bridge of his nose. This was a disaster. Never mind the kids, he'd gone overboard with the attackers, and he was going to have to explain it to the professor. It would be just their luck for the two men to make the connection and start pointing fingers at Xavier's. As Cecilia finished adding her good deed for the day into the victim's cell, Jim turned to the others.

"We're going back to the school," he said. His eyes fixed on Molly, then Namor.

"All of us. Now."

Molly bowed her head, pulling off her wig and stuffing it back into her backpack as she shuffled off to follow Mr. Haller and Dr. Reyes.

"Yes, sir," she said. This had turned into a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

The Attlani, now mostly recovered, made a an uncharacteristically large sweeping motion before pausing midway and crumpling into a grumbled "Yessir." One could practically see the self-flagellating thoughts in his glazed expression.