strangetrip | Warm Jelly Donut

Clarice still didn't sleep in her room. There were trust issues and decorating taste issues, but she was spending more time at the 'compound' as she called the Inn. Since the inhibitor collar was removed, Clarice's powers had been broken. She was pretty sure it had to do with everything that had happened to her, at least she hoped so.

So far everything that she'd tried to teleport came back split in two, even after she'd visited the places. Sometimes, it wouldn't hold true and fizzle out after a couple of minutes. The frustration was growing and she knew that made it even worse. She could hear John in her ear to concentrate on something you like.

She sat in the lobby, in one of the padded chairs, with a glowing light between her hands and a bunch of tennis balls at her feet. There was a light from the ceiling above, that correlated to the one between her hands. Clarice picked up one of the balls and tossed it through the teleport only to have two halves fall at her feet.

"Warm Jelly Donut."

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"My superhero name," Peter says. It's amazing to him sometimes how easily that comes out now. Nine months at the inn with a bunch of people with superpowers made talking about said superpowers a lot easier.

"I was bitten by a spider and ended up with spider powers."

"Spiders have powers?" Clarice asked, but there was amusement underlying her tone. Then she got serious, "wait how can being bitten by a spider give you powers? People get spider bites all the time."

She wondered if there was maybe something injected in the venom though more likely explanation, he was experimented on like Alec and he assumed it was a spider bite.

"I don't know, there was definitely something up with it," he says. "But the spider's dead, so I'm probably never gonna find out."

Peter seems strangely okay with this.

"Because of it, I'm super strong and super durable and I can crawl on walls and my senses are all dialed up to eleven. It's pretty cool." His lips quirk up into a smile.

Clarice thought that was spoken like someone that hadn't ever been hunted because he was different. And one that could pass for normal until he did something 'super'.

"It can be." She agreed, "until someone decides you're the enemy just because you're different. You feel safe here, just be careful when you get back." It might be different worlds, but people were still people and they hated things they didn't understand.

Peter begins to open his mouth to say that that hasn't happened to him yet for having abilities, but given that Flash routinely calls him Penis Parker for simply existing, he could still see a reality where people hated him for having powers.

"My identity's a secret," he assures her. "I wear a mask. The only people who know who I am are my best friend Ned, my Aunt May, Mr. Stark, and Happy."

A beat.

"And probably Pepper -- she's Mr. Stark's fiancee." At least he has that much protection. "Happy was Mr. Stark's bodyguard but now he's Head of Security slash Asset Manager. Oh, and Mr. Stark is Iron Man, by the way. He's a superhero too."

That seemed important to note when outlining the full cast of characters who know your secret identity.

"Did people treat you badly for having powers?" he asks finally. It sounds like it.

Clarice began to connect the dots between Alec's opinion of someone named Iron Man and Peter's. She was pretty sure it was the same person because the odds were slim there were more than one person named Iron Man.

It was good that he kept his identity a secret, though from the list of people that knew, it wasn't much of a secret.

"We're hunted." It was baldly stated but it was the truth. Which was why she wanted to make it clear to him that people didn't like different.

"Hunted?"

Peter's expression is perplexed, uncomprehending. He tries to comprehend, but the concept is so strange and foreign to him that he can't seem to get a grip around it.

"Like animals?"

"Just like it." Clarice almost said something smart ass, but the kid was so earnest, she didn't. "People don't trust different and when the world goes to shit, that's the first they turn to."

Peter shakes his head a little, still frowning. This doesn't make any sense. There were plenty of people who weren't fans of superpowered people, but there weren't many people that'd kill them. And the people that did want to kill them were supervillains who usually had other reasons for wanting to do that, anyway.

"What happened?" he asks. "I mean, when the world went to shit? How did they put the blame on you?" Plural-you.

"There was a mutant rights march in Dallas, Texas on July fifteen. It's been a few years and everyone calls it 7/15 because that's when everything changed. The march turned deadly and mutants were blamed. That was the beginning of it." Except that it had happened long before that. People hated mutants a lot longer than 7/15.

Peter frowns, and for a second doesn't say anything.

"Are mutants the only superpowered people where you come from?" he asks. "There's some other mutants here, too, but they never mentioned this to me. They might be from another reality or something."

"Mutants are it." Clarice said and then nodded, "I've met Emma. She told me there were other mutants here, too." She just hadn't made an effort to find out who they were.

"Yeah, I've trained with some of them," Peter says. "All of them have been really nice people."

Then again, so has most everyone here, with a few exceptions.

"If there's anything I can do to help," Peter says, looking up at the ceiling where the portal was before. "Let me know." He's pretty sure there's not going to be much he can do, but it seems only polite to make the offer. And who knows, maybe he could come in handy.

"I should get back to my room, though; gotta grab my book before class."

Warm Jelly Donut - Open

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