We Build Up Walls

Raven's breath hitched in surprise as she turned the corner. There was a girl standing in the tunnel opposite to her. Going rigid mid-step, her scales flickered as she slipped from her natural form to that of the human woman she preferred to mimic.



She took a sharp step back, regarding what stood it front of her: a girl, a young girl, was in the tunnels, alone, crawling around in a box, and had possibly just seen her shift from one form to another. God, she hoped it'd been too dark for her to see, that she'd moved fast enough. From what she'd observed before her escape down into the tunnels, it didn't seem like the human population of -- here, wherever she was -- was any more accepting of mutants than they were in Westchester. Not that she could have done much more for to prevent the situation, as it'd been impossible to hear the girl approaching from upstream the sewer-water river she'd been following. For far from the first time in her life, Raven wished her shapeshifting abilities had come along with enhanced senses.



She should have run. This girl was only a child though, and she was alone, at least as far as Raven could tell. Blinking into the darkness, she found that the erratic twisting of the tunnel obscured anything beyond a few hundred feet from view. Someone could easily be lurking back there, but if this child had a guardian, she wouldn't be down in sewers, would she? No watchful parent would let their child play with boxes that, from the film of slime that covered them, were clearly found in sewer tunnels.



Unless they'd had no choice, Raven realized. She'd be stupid to assume she was the only mutant taking cover in the sewers.



Against Raven's better judgement, she felt a pang of sympathy for the girl, something low in her stomach that reminded her of her own time on the streets. When the girl looked up at her, wide-eyed and smiling, the feeling only grew stronger. "Molly," she repeated back to her. "Are you alone down here, Molly?"

Tag: Molly Hayes Kamala Khan
Notes:  Thanks for starting the thread!

After scanning her surrounding, Kamala looked down at Molly. The large grin was contagious, lighting up her mood. The black-haired girl returned a smile. After the brief pause, Kamala looked straight at the woman. Without changing her size, the shapeshifter began to increase her density. Her movement slowed somewhat, but gained in gravitas. But before the woman introduced herself, Molly interjected. Kamala softened somewhat. The girl seemed to know something she didn't. Neck stretching down to tickle the little girl's ear, Kamala whispered, "Put on your superhero cape. Just in case." Kamala's own head turned blonde. Her dirty street clothes melded into the original Ms Marvel costume. The giant Carol Denver was now ready to face the unknown woman.

Her response took Kamala by surprise. The young hero froze, too stunned to speak, as the woman shifted from one appearance to another. The superhero nerd only knew of one mutant capable of this. And she isn't nice. Eyes narrowing, she asked, "What is the leader of the brotherhood of evil mutants doing here?" Kamala didn't think she would attack the two of them. This was a world hostile to mutants. While she was a villain, Kamala had heard that Mystique was protective of mutants. "I assume you are, like us, stuck in this strange world?" Ms Marvel lowered her fists, relaxing them into outstretched hands. They were still oversized, but not quite as threatening.

Looking back down, Kamala whispered to Molly "If I tell you to, run. Towards the bridge. I'll meet you there." Why hadn't they discussed an escape plan earlier? The teen just thought of these important things in the middle of emergencies. Worst timings. "But maybe you're right."

The older of the two girls was indeed more powerful than she'd initially seemed, just as Raven has suspected. A shapeshifter, similar in nature to her own mutation. Watching the girl transform -- if she was a girl at all -- was surreal, not only in how it mirrored her own power, but in that Raven had never realized how inhuman an ability it actually was. Fitting, really.

The girls' alarmed expressions confused her, though. If they were all mutants, there was nothing to be surprised by. When the shifter spoke, though, she understood, and the half-smile slipped from her face. "The Brotherhood," Raven said, pulling herself up to her full height, "disbanded years ago. Magneto was taken into custody." At least he had been, however much the half-healed bullet wound in her leg said otherwise. Regardless, young mutants with outdated information wasn't surprising. It wasn't like they'd gone around declaring their organization to the general public. As for whether she was stuck here or not -- well, Raven wasn't in the mood to reveal that she had very little knowledge of what, exactly, was happening, or how she'd arrived in this city, so she simply answered with, "The sewers? They seemed preferable to being surrounded by humans. You?"

It wasn't lost on her that these girls had likely been chased down into the tunnels, being younger and likely unskilled in concealing their powers. Whether they apparently considered the Brotherhood evil or not, they were all mutants in a similar situation. So when the little girl, Molly, pulled out a ratty semblance of a cape and started rambling about the X-Men, Raven only blinked and reminded herself that these girls likely had no idea what they were implying. If Charles' team had somehow reached legendary status among the youngest of the species, she didn't want to entirely crush their dreams. "The X-Men," she started, then paused, "went out with the Brotherhood. They haven't existed for -- God, almost a decade."

Raven decided mentioning that the last time she'd met any of them, they'd seemingly recruited Magneto and tried to kill her could wait for a later date. Children needed realism, not their hope destroyed.

Tag: Molly Hayes Kamala Khan
Notes:  "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants" should win the award for best public relations. Ever. 

Kamala frowned as the brotherhood mutant explained her view of the world. It was all so confusing! "I don't know who Trask is." Being captured by the CIA didn't sound nice. They didn't have a good reputation handling mutants. But Kamala thought that was ancient history. "And what do you mean, you've never heard of the Hulk?" The green superhero was kind of a big deal. He was also hard to miss. "I'm from Jersey, but that's not the point." arms started swinging wildly. Did Mystique not realize? What was going on with her not knowing the Hulk? "I mean this isn't our world. Their history is sorta similar to ours. They've had Napoleon and Hitler and all that. But some things are different. No mutants. They call them abnormals here."

The other shapeshifter insisted the X-men were over. Kamala narrowed her eyes in suspicion all the while lowering her right arm to give Molly a hug. "There is at least the three of us from our world. I refuse to believe we're the only ones." But what does she mean, it's not safe? Of course this world wasn't safe. It made even her old earth look like a island of tolerance by comparison. Or did she mean the X-men were a source of danger. That just didn't compute... until the revelation. "What?" Ms Marvel responded before closing her eyes. She needed to think. Her grip on Molly's shoulder tightened unconsciously.

Kamala remained silent for the next couple of seconds. Her brain kept registering any exchange between Mystique and Princess Powerful. Information got coursed through her, detaching and reassembling into theories and possibilities. How she would have dreamed of such an adventure three months ago, writing fanfics in her room. Plunged inside of one of her stories, it felt a bit more bizarre. Slowly though, the fan-fire rose again in Kamala's heart. Maybe it was the presence of the legendary mystique. Maybe it was Molly's contagious energy. This is what I dreamed of. Repeating herself, she simply stated, "We're going to find the X-men and every single mutant stuck here. We're going to save them, Princess P. and I." Ms Marvel then looked at the other shapeshifter, as if daring her to contradict them again. Or maybe it was an invitation to join the strange team. After all, she was a mutant too.

Raven was having a difficult time finding some justification for anyone, let alone mutants, being unfamiliar with the name. "Trask Industries," she supplied, waiting for some sign of recognition. "He runs experiments on mutants." Trask Industries was far more of a household name than whoever this Hulk was -- some kind of local mutant hero, she supposed. "Never heard of him." She was about to insist that she'd been to Jersey and there was no one there by the name either, but Kamala's statement that this was somehow another world entirely halted any further attempts to defend her knowledge of the mutant world. Raven could only hope that her eyes didn't betray her complete surprise at the idea. She'd been beginning to doubt her initial judgement that these girls had been misinformed, but not in a way of this magnitude. "Abnormals," she repeated, setting her jaw in an attempt to cover her confusion.

It wasn't impossible. She'd seen mutants so powerful they'd seemed near-divine, and while most of their powers had been destructive, who was to say there weren't similar mutants with the power to create a a parallel Earth? Still, Raven couldn't help but feel slightly alarmed at the revelation. A different world, and one without mutants, apparently. "The humans are still angry, though, and dangerous."

The pavement smashed, Molly's sudden demonstration of the Hulk's power snapping Raven back to reality. Dodging away from the flying derbies, her scales flickered in an aimless attempt at forming something harder to protect her. Fortunately, the only thing that managed to hit her was a small splattering of sewer water, that, while disconcertingly brown, slid across her scales harmlessly. Well, the girl had power, at least. "Watch that," she snapped towards Molly, then, remembering how young the girl was, added, "You never know who's watching."

For however young the girls were, they took the news about Magneto's presence surprisingly well. "As far as I know, he's doing more than just providing them with his power. They're allied." On how friendly of terms, Raven had no idea. "Last I heard of him, he was locked up underneath the Pentagon. I'd assume they got him out, and he's paying his debts now." Still, that didn't sound quite right to her -- though she hadn't known Mangeto in over a decade, she had known Erik, and he hadn't been one to stick around unwillingly if he didn't want to. But for now, best guesses were all she had to go on.

When Kamala propositioned the rescue of any other mutants in this world, Magneto be damned, Raven paused, inspecting the two girls. She had to give them credit for their ambition, and they did seem to be powerful, but they were young and inexperienced and just -- they weren't hard. Anyone who tried to play hide-and-seek in the sewers was still so naive, despite their status as mutants. "If you want to do that, you're going to need a plan. Wandering around the sewers isn't going to find you more mutants, and even if you get lucky, it's not going to help them." So far, these were the only other mutants Raven had met in this city. She didn't want to abandon them yet, and she wasn't about to let them run off with no idea of what they were getting into. "Is there some kind of meeting place for these 'abnormals?' Anything you've heard of?"

Tag: Molly Hayes Kamala Khan