Miles & Molly, backdated to September 30

[x-otoxic.livejournal.com]

One super-strong mutant meets another, and they talk about X-adventures over a game of Super Mario.


Miles's parents had never had enough money to buy and stock video game systems, and Brooklyn Visions banned them from campus. He had plenty of computer games and he often played PlayStation or X-Box at friends' houses, but that was very limiting. So when he discovered that the student rec room at Xavier's school had a collection of pretty much every video game system and game ever, it was like he'd died and gone to heaven.

It took him a good 20 minutes before he finally decided to play the Wii port of Super Mario Brothers 3. Classic game. Miles sat down on the couch to start playing, but after a minute, relocated to sit up on the back. Much more comfortable.

A dragon head slowly poked it's way up from behind the couch.

"Oooh, whatcha playin?"

It's voice, high pitched and bubbly didn't quite sound like how one imagined a dragon to sound.

Miles's spider sense hadn't pinged any danger, so the sudden appearance of a plush dragon startled him so badly that he fell off of his perch. Now his spider-sense blared to warn him of the impending faceplant. But with cat-like reflexes, Miles managed to tumble off in a messy flip and land on his feet. Concussion averted.

"Mierda," he gasped when he righted himself. "Gonna give a guy a heart attack!"

A pair of wide green eyes peeked out from behind the couch right beneath what turned out to be a dragon hat belonging to Miss Molly Hayes. Molly erupted into a giggle that she covered with her hands

"Oops, sorry!" she said, coming into full view, albeit hesitantly juust in case he might be a little grumpy. Her giggle was replaced with a serious look.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, sorry, I'm fine. Just surprise me is all. This place is making me awful jumpy." He finally got a good look at the girl now that his spider sense shut up. She was tiny, even smaller than him, and he was used to being the smallest one around. Her face looked familiar, though. "Molly, right? I think I remember you from the school blog. I'm Miles."

"Oh!" Molly said, extending her hand. Cause it was polite.

"Yep! That's me! Nice to meet you! Sorry I didn't reply about the robot thing...I...don't think there have been robots? There's been other stuff though. Like magic. And ghosts." She paused, realizing that she'd said the same thing to Gabriel and he got kinda wigged at first. She bit her lip.

"Uh...But it only happens sometimes...I need to stop talking," she mumbled.

Even though she'd told him that she's super-strong, Miles was shocked by just how powerful her grip was. Part of him wanted to squeeze back and see just who was the stronger one, but his mother would scold him for doing that to a girl. And besides, she could very well have been stronger than him.

Miles shrugged. "At least you have a sense of humor about the magic robots and stuff. Some people" - like certain suitemates - "get mad when you try to joke."

Molly nodded quickly. "I think it's good to be careful and stuff...since saving lives is like serious business but...dude...the X-People save people's lives like ALL THE TIME," she said, spreading her hands out excitedly like a magician showing off a magic trick .

"I mean...that is SO COOL! They're like the Justice League."

She knew she was supposed to take things seriously and she was trying to and trying to do what the adults said. She didn't try to fight crime anymore. But she could still be happy about eventually getting to be able to do superheroing, right?

"Right?" Finally, someone who understood where he was coming from. "Who doesn't wanna be Superman? I mean, yeah, I'm sure it's scary and dangerous, but they do good. That's gotta outweigh everything else. So are you going to train to be an X-Man, too?"

"Yep!" Molly chirped brightly.

"Well...X-Person cause...X-Men makes it sound like there are all Men and there are women too, y'know? And I don't wanna be a dude...no offense. I just wanna be me."

She shifted positions, pulling her legs up underneath her. "I can't wait until next year! I get to be a trainee! Maybe. If my parents give me permission."

"You have to get your parents' permission?" Miles looked like he just drank old milk. "The hell." That wouldn't go down well, he was sure. And that would mean telling them about his other extracurriculars, too. "You think your parents are gonna go for it?" he asked, hopping (literally) back up onto the couch.

Molly fell silent for a moment or two. "Well..." She made a face. "They're sort of...bad guys--reformed bad guys?" she added quickly.

"They worked for some bad people so they're on the run from them." She let out a huff.

"So I dunno. Adults can be weird about stuff like that."

"I don't know if my parents will ever say yes. They're pretty . . . protective." Best case scenario, Miles thought. Worst case they'd pull him out of the school so quickly that his head would still be spinning when he was thrown back into an overcrowded, underfunded public school. "Hey, you wanna play Mario with me? We can take turns on levels."

"Sure!" Molly's response was immediate. "I can be Luigi! I like green."

She picked up a controller, tilting her head at the screen. "I wish they could make a new game where Princess Peach gets to save Mario some time, though. That'd be fun!"

After a moment, she glanced over. "Do they know what you can do?"

"There's that new Zelda game where you can actually play as Zelda instead of playing as Link in a game named after Zelda like all the other games." Miles passed along control of the game to Molly so she could have the chance to play.

"I told my parents . . . some of what I can do. My powers are kind of complicated so I didn't really get into the whole thing. I lifted my bed up to show how strong I am. That was pretty much enough for them."

"Why didn't you tell them about the rest?" Molly said, navigating Luigi through the level. Luckily she knew not to overmash the buttons. She had broken a few controllers before that way.

"I am so getting that game, by the way." Maybe Wademan would take her to the store?

Because if they knew the full extent of his mutation then they'd probably make the leap to discovering that he was Spider-Man, he thought glumly. And then he'd definitely not get to go to X-Men School. But instead of saying all that, Miles just shook his head. "It's really complicated. I just . . . didn't want to freak them out more than I had to, sabes?"

"Yeah...." Molly decided, nodding sympathetically. "Parents are so weird sometimes. Well....all adults, y'know? They wanna make sure you're safe and stuff. But sometimes you gotta do stuff for yourself. My daddy wanted me to be a mutant. Cause he was a mutant. And they thought I was a human until I lifted a truck over my head after Nanny and the Robot tried to kidnap me and--"

She pressed a few buttons rapidly, suddenly distracted as Luigi was being chased by a ghost thing in the castle level. "Go go go go go! No more booboobooboo music!"

She had forgotten that she had just told him she hadn't fought robots before.

"Wait, so there was a robot?" No way was Miles going to pass up that one. "That sounds like Robot with a capital R. What happened? Ooh, get the fireflower! Right there!"

"Oh yeah!" Molly said, making Luigi jump onto the platform to run over the fireflower. She didn't know how running over something gave you superpowers but maybe he grabbed it and ate it and they just couldn't see it cause he was made of pixels. Like Wreck it Ralph.

"No, he wasn't REALLY a robot. He just looked like a robot. He was a guy in a giant mechanical suit, kinda like um...Voltron? But evil," she said. She'd been learning new stuff since she started working on cars with Wademan.

"And his mom was this lady that wanted to own like a bunch of orphan kids cause she thought she could take care of them better than their own parents. She was totally weird. That's how I met the X-People!"

She squinted at the screen. "Hey...Isn't this the level where you can run across the top of the game and skip some levels?"

Miles nodded and pointed to the upper right corner of the screen. "Yeah, you can get the whistle to skip worlds. It's up that way. And that's mad weird. Kidnapping kids is weird enough. But that's some psycho Arkham Asylum-level weird to mecha up and snatch kids to raise them. Where are they now?"

Molly tilted her head. "Ooh, neat! thanks!" She was glad she didn't miss it. She didn't like the water world for some reason. Luigi and Mario reminded her of her since they could crush bricks without even trying. Hmm. She'd never crushed bricks with her HEAD before. That might be fun.

"The X-People brought them back to the foster homes. I dunno where they went after that." She frowned suddenly.

"I should've checked up on them." It'd been like 4 years now. Some of them were probably already adults.

"I, uh, meant the bad guys." Molly wasn't the only one with intact priorities. "How'd they even get you, anyway? You're so strong."

"Oh!" Molly shook her head. "I dunno. In jail, I think. I wasn't strong when they tried to kidnap me. My powers showed up for the first time when my the Robot tried to hurt my mom. I lifted a truck. It was kinda awesome," she said proudly.

"Then I fell asleep. I do that sometimes. Like when I lift a lot. I'm getting better though. My parents thought I was human for awhile. My daddy didn't like that." She frowned.

"So you've gotta know all the good superstrength exercises, right?" Miles asked, thinking back to his trip of the gym back when he first arrived. All those crazy big machines and weights that he didn't know how to use right. "Do you think you could show me sometime?"

"Me?" Molly said curiously. She never showed anyone how to do something before. Usually people showed her.

"You sure?"

"Well, yeah," Miles replied, curiously cocking his head. "How many other super-duper strong people are there here? And you've been doing it for a long time so you've gotta know all the good exercises and tricks."

"Um....Rogue and Monet...but she's not here anymore. She taught me," Molly said. She blinked again. "Okay...I can show you. But only if you're sure?"

That felt like an adult thing to do. It was weird. But neat weird.

"Yeah, it'd be cool. I'd really appreciate it." Molly's Luigi passed the finish line, and the game transferred control back to Miles. "So you show me that and I'll show you how this is done!"