LIGHTNOVELONLINE Iris and Me
Chapter 79 : Dawn of a new era (Assembling part 4)
Chapter 79 : Dawn of a new era (Assembling part 4)
Gwendolyn’s bedroom, the Stacy’s flat, Whitestone, Queens, New York, 5th of May, 15:54, in Gwendolyn Stacy’s mind
Gwendolyn didn’t even blink as Aria and her flickered into existence in her bedroom, having gotten used to the unusual sensation since the morning now and finding it rather pedestrian after the mad dash they had made to rush out of the mall, get to Flash in Brooklyn and swing by Cindy’s house to pick her up just after.
The blond released her hold on the taller girl’s hand as soon as she confirmed that they were good to go, looking at the symbiote-clad girl with a little smile.
Iris’ current shape was the one Aria and she had selected for their heroic activity : a full bodysuit textured like an all purpose military grade fabric and complete with an integral mask, both nose- and mouthless like Cindy and Gwen’s own, with wide and expressive purple upslanted eyes and a mass of what looked suspiciously like a mix of dreadlocks mixed with Iris’ own little tentacly extension the symbiote always fashioned herself in guise of hair on the back of the ‘head’.
When questioned about it, Aria had been deliberately vague.
Gwendolyn suspected it was both to avoid pressing on the curly mane the golden girl was so proud of and to look cool.
The fact that it could also act like a bunch of very lethal extensions if push came to shove had also probably factored in the paranoid human-alien duo's decision.
The predominant color was snow white all around, except for the forearms and legs where the shade shifted from white to a bold purple in a gradient. On her torso, a very big and bright purple ‘P’ written in an elegant cursive stood boldly in a startling contrast to its more sober counterpart on the taller girl’s right shoulder.
“Thanks, you should go wait with the others.” She said easily, fighting the blush rising to her cheeks as she removed her hood while watching Aria drop her shopping back neatly to the ground with Iris’ assistance.
Please, go away so I can change!
I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if you stayed!
“You’re probably right,” The taller girl ‘hummed’, her hands on her hips, “I’m worried Cindy might do something stupid if I’m not here to reign her in.”
Gwendolyn chuckled, clearly picturing her fellow totemite, visibly thrilled at the idea of finally doing something worth her powers, running out of her already feeble patience.
Saying that the girl had been ecstatic when they had finally picked her up was putting it lightly.
“Don’t let me keep you,” The blond said jokingly, shooing the taller girl with her hands, “Go watch after the kids.”
Aria snorted.
“Yes mom!” The symbiote-clad girl chirped with a mock salute, complete with a wink of her big right ‘eye’ before she flickered out of existence, presumably back on building's roof.
Gwendolyn let go of a breath she didn’t know she was holding, her expression suddenly conflicted.
She distractedly moved toward her desk, shrugging off her purse in the same motion as she started to remove her hair clips.
A glance in her full length mirror informed her that her dress was crumpled after the frantic fly and teleport combo she had been subjected to and her hair was a mess.
She scrunched her nose at the view, feeling strangely bothered by the picture.
It’s so unfair, she’s always pristine, her.
Shaking her head once more to banish her idle thoughts, the blond started to move toward her wardrobe to fish out the rest of her suit, cleverly hidden in a false bottom that Flash had installed there one day when her parents were gone.
Lost in her thoughts and in a rush, she was understandably surprised when her bedroom’s door clicked open.
Gwendolyn volt-faced as fast as she could, finding herself face to face with her mother, her arms full with a head high pile of clean laundry.
Realizing that her mother still hadn’t seen her, what with the rather big pile she was juggling in her arms, the blond made a split second decision.
Spinning around, she flashed a few strands of silk, intending to gather her purse and shopping bags in one fell swoop at the same time as she jumped up with all that she was worth.
Less than a second later, she had all of her things secured next to her, her own back and hands stuck to her ceiling while her heart was apparently desperately trying to beat itself out of her chest.
Don’t look up, don’t look up, don’t look up, don’t look up…
Endlessly repeating her own mantra, Gwendolyn watched her mother going around her room, fussing over little things and tidying her clothes in her wardrobe, humming a wordless tune under her breath with a pleased expression.
How did I miss her singing?
I was lost in thought that much?
To be fair, it has already been a long day for Gwendolyn. Going on a not-a-date with her crush, meeting another heroic team with a beef with Aria, having a stand-off, going for an impromptu trip to the Astral plane, meeting the Astral body of a Cosmic Force.
Watching Aria scream and flail and writhe in pain…
Gwendolyn repressed a shudder, like she had been doing since they came back.
That whole experience, meeting an existence so far above her own that she couldn’t even begin to understand it, had been both humbling and horrific in equal measure.
The blond still remembered the suffocating and smothering heat He had flared when He had been made aware that someone had dared to harm His avatar. The crushing weight of His presence when He had exercised His power, forcing her to bend her knees and hold for dear life not to get blown away when she wasn’t even the target of His ire.
Meeting the Phoenix had been an eye-opener to Gwendolyn.
The reality that there were others like Him with less than favorable attention toward mortals as a rule of thumb was positively terrifying.
Watching the girl she fancied reduced to a crying mess because He had chosen to ‘help her’ had been the cherry on the cake.
Yet the golden girl had bounced back up almost instantly, already rushing headlong toward the next objective once she had been made aware of it.
Gwendolyn had mixed feelings about it.
This isn’t right.
No, that wasn’t right to her. After such a harrowing experience, she would have wished nothing more for Aria than to go home and rest.
Gwendolyn wasn’t even sure the other girl knew of her new physical feature, Jean and Scott having said nothing about it while in the Astral plane and herself trying too hard not to cry on Aria’s behalf.
The blond didn’t know how she would react once she saw it for the first time in a mirror.
Maybe I should tell her?
What if she already had enough surprises for a day?
Surely, Iris told her?
Amid her own wool-gathering, Gwendolyn barely caught onto what her mother said, a satisfied expression etched on her face as she straightened up after her impromptu bout of housework.
“I can’t believe my little girl is all grown up now!” Helen said, a beaming smile on her face.
Gwendolyn’s thoughts grew to a halt, her cheeks reddening instantly.
Please don’t say anything, I beg you!
“And what a catch she landed!” Gwendolyn’s mother cooed, distractedly looking toward the full length mirror, “So polite! So dashing! And beautiful to boot!”
Repressing an involuntary and very much audible sputter, Gwendolyn realized with dread that she was at risk to get exposed through the mirror’s reflection if her mother moved just a few steps to the right.
Oh, frick!
Don’t look up, don’t look up, don’t look up, don’t look up…
As she started to silently skitter across her ceiling to escape her mother's distracted gaze, the blond couldn’t escape the mortifying live commentary about her dating life.
“Now, I’ll have to formulate a plan to bring it up to George,” Her mother muttered, a hand idly scratching her chin and her expression thoughtful, “That wouldn’t do if he made an arse of himself when my baby girl finally tells him that she likes them that way.”
Nodding to herself as if she had resolved life’s greatest equation, Helen’s eyes narrowed as she inched herself closer to the mirror.
With a steadily rising degree of morbid curiosity, Gwendolyn watched her mother straighten her blouse and palm her ‘assets’ up, tightening her bra to give them more ‘oomph’.
“When in doubt, nothing beats showing the goods a little bit.” Helen proudly declared, adopting a sultry pose to her own benefit, “Always managed to make him amenable to a proper talk…”
“...Once properly exhausted.” She added after a beat and a saucy wink at her own reflection.
Gwendolyn watched her mother’s attention snap to her desk while she badly tried to repress both a gag and an outraged expression.
“Hmm, I wonder.” The middle-aged woman pondered aloud as she made her way in her daughter’s cosmetic collection.
She rummaged for a bit before straightening herself up with a victorious ‘ah-Ah!’.
Helen beelined back to the mirror, screwing up one of Gwen’s lipstick to the dismay of the latter.
“There!” Her mother declared, visibly proud of herself after having expertly drawn her mouth with a rather bold plump and velvety color, “Now I don’t see how he could resist that.”
She punctuated her sentence with a playful slap on her own behind before making her way back to Gwendolyn’s desk, intent on dropping the lipstick back.
Amid her cringe overload, both at the idea that her mother could act like that when nobody was around and that she had used the very lipstick Gwendolyn had bought because the color reminded her of someone’s favored color scheme, both mother and daughter’s attention got drawn to a particular detail.
The hair clips!
“Strange…” Her mother muttered, picking one of the hair clips idly, “I thought she was wearing those earlier.”
Don’t look up, don’t look up, don’t look up, don’t look up…
“I must have been daydreaming.” Helen shrugged while dropping back the hair clip, “Or maybe I was still blinded by her date’s beauty!”
Gwendolyn’s mother laughed throatily as her own daughter’s ears burned.
Blessedly for Gwendolyn’s sanity, her mother finally decided that she had enough laugh at her expense and exited her daughter’s bedroom.
After waiting ten more seconds while paying extra attention to the sounds inside of her family’s flat, the blond finally lowered herself slowly back to her bedroom’s floor, sighing quietly yet mightily under her breath.
Well, that was definitely something…
Wordlessly and silent as a ghost, fully intent at not getting caught red-handed by her mother, the blond hid both her purse and her shopping bags under her bed before making her way once more to her own wardrobe.
I had no idea mum was like that.
I mean, I guess I should be happy? She even seems ready to… put in the work… to get father off my back if he shows himself to be less than supportive.
Making a face at the mental image she had unwillingly conjured, Gwendolyn shrugged off her clothes and shoes as fast as she could, punting those under her bed in the same motion.
It was a matter of seconds after that before she was clad in her hero suit, catching a glance at herself in her full length mirror as she turned around.
Her own reflection made Gwendolyn pause, her eyes roaming over the tightly hugging fabric which blessedly managed not to put too much emphasis on her chest.
I’ll have to thank Iris for her fashion choice, I guess.
Not for the first time, Gwendolyn wondered if her own color schemes, mostly white with black outlines and a big purple spider drawing, was in any way a form of validation of her relationship with Aria by the alien lifeform.
She’s modeled after her host, so she and Aria said, but does she really know what love is?
Gwen fiddled for a beat with her hood as she pondered her latest conundrum before shaking her head and making her way toward her window.
The now masked girl climbed over the windowsill, opening it and closing it in one well practiced motion after a certain number of nights playing hooky to improve the city’s esthetic.
Throwing a silk line up, she jumped and somersaulted to reorient herself face first to the building.
As she started to climb the building up, Gwendolyn idly realized that it was the first time that she wore her suit in plain daylight after catching her reflection in a sunlit window.
We’re really doing this, aren’t we?
It didn’t take her long to reach the building’s roof after that.
She had barely jumped over the roof’s edge when Cindy’s voice got heard.
"Finally!" The other girl exclaimed, seated cross-legged atop an AC unit and arms akimbo, “What the hell took you so long?”
Gwendolyn sighed under her hood as her eyes roamed around.
“Where are the others?” She asked instead of answering.
“Well since Miss I-take-forever-to-change here was being difficult, they decided to make a quick two-way trip to fetch Tank’s gear.” Cindy huffed, arms folded across her chest.
“Stop being a nuisance, my mother barged into my room while I was changing.” Gwendolyn complained, “I had to spend forever stuck to my ceiling to avoid getting caught.”
Cindy tilted her head, her mask’s insectoid eyes projecting clear puzzlement.
I’m never going to stop wondering how those two managed to pull that off, don’t I?
“Why didn’t you just use your pheromones?” The black wearing spider-totemite asked, clearly at a loss. “Made her go away quicky-fast like?”
Gwendolyn huffed, making her own way to lean against the AC unit.
“I’m not going to drug my own mother just because it’s convenient.” She explained, her arms folding across her chest defensively.
“But Prod uses her compulsions all the time!” Cindy argumented.
“Not really, no.” Gwendolyn answered, starting to count on her hands, “Let’s see : the first day, of course, when she didn’t really had a choice if she wanted to have a chance at a normal life ; each time one of us or our families got inducted to avoid to spill the beans of course ; and this morning to prevent a potential confrontation with the X-Men.”
The white wearing spider-totemite dropped her hands.
“Doesn’t really seem like all the time to me.” She deadpanned, “And the reasoning behind it was pretty much ironclad if you ask me.”
Cindy snorted.
“As if you’ll ever find faults in what she does, Weaver.” She answered with a dismissive gesture, making Gwendolyn bristle a bit, “But I’ve got powers so I’m gonna to use them.”
Yeah, because that could totally not backfire in your own face.
“Your life, your choices, Silk.” Gwendolyn concluded, settling herself to wait for the two others.
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