ya_assemble | [LN] The Princess returns in glory

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[LN] The Princess returns in glory - or at least with enthusiasm

She'd been home.

Molly had been home, she knew that much, but for almost no time at all - enough to wake up from her nap and recognize that she was in the Leapfrog, Victor and Chase arguing about something up front and Karolina laughing at them. It was a little stuffy and the seat vibrated a little and there was that slight tug at her stomach as they Leapfrogged homewards--

And then she was at the North Pole, dumped unceremoniously onto a pile of teddy bears, to the surprise of one of the Yetis. She blinked at him for a moment, then scrambled out of the pile and took off running. The elves that saw her immediately started trying to follow her, excited to have their fellow toy-tester back, and it was that... rather unique tableau that she presented to anyone who happened to be watching as she raced upstairs looking for people she recognized.

"NICOOOOOOO!"

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"Well," Molly started. AH SOMEONE TO LISTEN TO HER RECITATIONS OF THINGS CHASE HAS SAID. "They don't think kids know anything, so they don't let us do anything, and they won't listen to us. They think because they're older they have all the answers and are sub... subjugating us based on our age."

She stopped, then shrugged. "That's what Chase says. Even the subjugated part, sometimes, and that's a pretty big word for him." She made fun of her big brother thing even when he wasn't here. Cold, Molls. So cold. "Really it's 'cause they never listen and they didn't help, and then they tried to split us up and send us to all sorts of different schools and foster homes and stuff really far away from each other, even though we were a family by then. And the Avengers - they're one of the big teams of superheroes who are kind of in charge, but they're stinkbutts - tried to take us away again, and they brought guys with guns to where we were living!" She throws her hands up to emphasize.

"So basically there are a couple of okay grown-ups but most of them aren't, so you can't really trust any of them," she finishes. She's mostly parroting at the end, though she does believe it to an extent. It's a lot easy to change her mind on an adult's trustworthiness than the rest of her family's.

"The adults in your universe sound stupid. The superheroes in ours would never - wait a second, the Avengers? You have the Avengers in your universe?"

Because, well, technically he was one. Not a real one, since the team was a sham, but he was one of Norman Osborn's New Avengers, along with all the psychos and supervillains that were masquerading as superheroes.

"You do too?" Molly asked, wide-eyed. "But there wasn't ever anything about earths crashing into each other or or or some guy named Superman or--"

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING. Somehow.

"They weren't from my original world but they were on the other world ours merged with. I'm actually technically a member of the New Avengers. If you can even call it that when most of them are criminals and psychos Norman Osborn put together. They even stole Cap's shield and were making me wave it around like that wasn't a major superhero faux pas."

He went on, "The actual good guys are a bunch of superheroes from my world working with leftover Avengers and people from various superteams from the other world. They call themselves the Defenders."

His face wrinkled in thought.

"I'm thinking I'm either from your future or my world merged with an alternate universe version of yours."

Edited 2014-11-10 08:51 (UTC)

"That is so cool!" Molly said, then made a face. "I mean, no it's not, 'cause that all sucks a lot, but you're from maybe my future or something, and that's so cool!"

She bounced a little. "The X-Men were my favorite before they were big jerks and tried to make me live in some mutant school. Were there any X-Men?"

"Yeah, a couple of 'em."

He thought back to all the profiles they'd made him memorize (in case he had to kill them all.)

"I remember reading casefiles on some dude named Beast, the Phoenix, and some dude named Cyclops was catching the government's eye in San Fran. Phoenix was the only one on the Defenders."

"I know them!" Molly cheered. "Well, okay, I don't KNOW them, but they were on my X-Men!"

"Wow, I wonder if it's our earth. Oh! If it's in our future, maybe we can try to rescue you after it happens and you come back!" She sounded so utterly delighted by that idea. "Then maybe we can change the future and you won't ever have to do things you don't wanna!"

"Ah, having been on more than one little jaunt up and down the timeline, I don't know that that'd be a good idea. Especially with the big crisis fight. Change anything with me and maybe that changes that I was there in the fight, you know? Doing my part. Too risky. Besides, you could be from an alternate one."

As much as he wished he could erase it all, he'd had his fair share of time travel shenanigans with the Legion. He knew how risky all that was.

And it said a lot about his character that he was willing to go through that kind of suffering if it meant not risking the fate of two worlds.

"It doesn't matter, anyway, I'm free now and if that nanochain thing wasn't already destroyed by me turning into a myth, I can find some way to get it out before I go back. Some...spell or something. If I go back without that, they can't control me anymore. I can fly off to the good guys, tell 'em what the government did to me, and we can take 'em down."

"Well, we'll see!" Molly said blithely. "I guess we'll try to make sure we don't break anything, though, if it does happen in my universe."

No promises on the attempted rescues, though. She's 12, there are more important things to worry about.

"Ooooo, a spell? You should talk to Nico, she's got this really cool staff that can do anything! I bet she could get rid of the nanothingy if you still have it."

"Yeah? That might work. I've got invulnerability but one thing that can usually put the whammy on me despite it is magic."

He drew in a deep breath at the thought of that.

"Then I'd be home free. Which isn't just good for me, it's good for everyone. The government had me hunting down anyone they didn't like, anyone messing with the system, even when they were doing it for good reasons and picking at all the corruption. I was always trying to flub up to let them run away and make it look like an accident. Like all the aliens they were trying to make disappear."

"That's good!" Molly exclaimed, enthusiastically. Look, she was trying to be encouraging, and look at how hard he worked to get around the evil government people! "That's super heroic, you know. It's like only doing what your parents TECHNICALLY tell you to do, like getting in bed but not going to sleep, only actually important."

She bounced on the balls of her feet excitedly. "I bet even if she can't do it right away, Nico can totally figure out how to get rid of it! And if she can't, probably Sam or somebody could, so you're totally in the right place!"

"It also means I'd be able to expose the bad guys behind it all and get them out of the government."

Her enthusiasm was contagious. Finally, he could stop being the bad guy. He could fight the actual bad guys again.

It meant he was forgetting his audience and the fact she was a little kid. He was so used to being in the thick of it, forgot what it was like to be around people, forgot that violence wasn't a normal part of life.

"It'll be such a relief. There've been way too many close calls with the stuff they nearly had me do. Like the time I almost killed that Majesdanian chick. Luckily her Skrull girlfriend jumped in and forcefielded me in the face before I had to snap her neck. I mean, I'm pretty sure she survived, at least, she was hurt pretty bad. Too many close calls -"

Molly wouldn't really bat much of an eyelash at that statment, honestly, if it wasn't for six words: Majesdanian chick and her Skrull girlfriend. Sure, it could be different people.

But it probably wasn't, and even if she'd been thinking of that, Molly would still have assumed--

"That's Karolina and Xavin!" she yelps. "They made you attack Karolina and Xavin?!"

She's not mad or upset at him, for what it's worth - just startled, and mad at the government. Just goes to show you can't trust grown-ups, clearly. But that's a nuance that Kon probably won't pick up on.

It was always like the inexorable pull of gravity, the way he was reminded that he'd hurt people - good people. It wasn't that he wasn't aware of it or that he didn't care. He cared. He'd always cared. That was part of how they'd messed him up so badly.

He'd cared enough to try to botch as many jobs as he could, which was the reason Karolina Dean had survived the encounter at all.

But a lot of his natural empathy was still repressed like crazy just so he could get through the day. His past actions had to be looked at through a veil of "thing happened, person survived said thing." Seeing people as individual people, seeing them as fragile, breakable things that bled and hurt and had connections to people, was something he as trying to coax into coming back very slooowly.

Because having all that empathy come back at once would probably kill him.

"They were your friends, weren't they." He briefly closed his eyes. "Molly Hayes. Nico Minoru. Still MIA - Dean and the Skrull - Xavin - were on your team and were the only ones back. The Pride's kids. You were mentioned in the briefing. I read your files."

He'd tried to kill her friend. Okay, so technically he'd tried not to kill her friend, tried to botch the fight so she could get away but it'd been so unbalanced and a few shots meant to go wild hadn't gone as wild as he'd hoped, and she'd been hurt pretty badly. Probably not enough to be killed but...badly. At least until the Skrull showed up (thank God).

When he opened his eyes again, they were wide and horrified as his brain made the connections again, snap snap. Empathy, how he used to feel it. The Majesdanian being a person less in the vague "I tried to make it so she got away, she didn't deserve to die" kind of way and more in the "I bruised and bloodied her before managing to avoid snapping her neck, she didn't deserve any of that, I am the world's worst human being" kind of way.

He'd tried (not?) to kill the friend of this tiny little girl who'd hugged him because he was sad. Who wore little animal hats and chirp chirp chirped away like Lian Harper. It was her friend - the only family she had left from the way the briefing had made it sound.

He started to float away from her, expression horrified.

"I - I -"

Edited 2014-11-29 20:38 (UTC)

"They had files on us?" Molly asked immediately, because that's clearly the important takeaway from this conversation. "Woah."

But then Kon was pulling away, and she decided to focus on the good part - which Kon probably wasn't. "But she's alive, right? Karolina's tough and you said Xavin rescued her!"

"Yeah, she was. She got her out before she was hurt too bad. Probably."

It was the probably that caused the glass inside his head to shatter.

"I'm gonna - I'm - I'm - I'm -"

He was not a stutterer, not usually, but his brain seemed to be trying to rewind. Maybe it was skipping, trying to go back to a time before all this, but scratching away, never really able to turn back the clock.

His face was oddly blank as he said, "I'm gonna go. Your friend's probably around. The yetis can help you find her if you need it."

He was already floating away as he said it. He felt the crash coming, a sucking void in his chest trying to drag in his heart. It was probably not going to be a good thing for a little kid to see, especially after he'd just admitted beating up her friend.

"Kon?" He started flying off and she ran over to the railing, trying to follow him. "Kon, it's okay! I'm not mad!"

Because clearly that was the problem.

Kon briefly looked back at her, eyes looking just a little bit wilder.

"I know," he said gently. "I'm just a little mad at myself right now."

And with that, he turned and flew off, diving down through the center hub that passed through every level, down towards the bottom level where the gym was, before she could see him crumble.

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[LN] The Princess returns in glory - or at least with enthusiasm

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