Chapter 69

Breakfast was a less formal affair than dinner the night before was. They ended up grabbing egg wraps and eating them out in the yard. 'They' being Luz's group, her Mom, the Martial Arts Club, and Molly's girlfriend who had come to find her.

Molly was absolutely gushing over the palismen and while Luz could only understand Stringbean's responses it seemed that the precious little angels were enjoying the attention. Her girlfriend, Klara, whose long dark hair was pulled back in a raid and who wore mostly traditional clothes, had also fawned over the adorable creatures but had quickly gotten caught in a side conversation with Willow who'd asked her about the garden club which had in turn led to a general discussion of plants, gardening, and powers.

"You can actually talk to plants?" Willow asked almost reverently.

"Kind of," Klara replied, "it's more processing what the plants are sensing and influencing them with my own thoughts and feelings. Flowers are the only ones that talk back, but even then it's not like, you know, a person talking."

"Otherwise the huge bouquet of roses she gave me when she asked me out would have been a mass murder," Molly interjected. "It was the size of me."

"...I'd been crushing on Molly for almost the whole time I'd known her," Klara confirmed. "I had to um, work through some stuff before I could really process it and then we were separated, and... By the time I had the nerve and the opportunity I just sort of panicked and overdid it."

"...I can relate," Amity added.

"And even though it was super obvious in hindsight it blindsided me and I had to reevaluate my emotions," Molly continued.

"...And I can relate to that," Luz added herself.

"But everything's fine now," Klara concluded. "We have a date this afternoon and everything!"

"...So I have a question about that," Luz began. "Molly um, said you were going to see a movie and then you were going to dance on your husband's grave but um..."

"I have concerns about that, too," her Mom added.

"I was born in Switzerland in 1895," Klara replied. "When my powers first came in, my birth giverdecided that they were proof that I was inherently wicked and deserved to suffer and die and then burn in Hell for all eternity. So she sold me as a bride to a man old enough to be my father, who took me with him to New York where he repeated all of the things my mother said, and forced me to work in a textile factory—I almost died in a fire—and drank away my wages while doing no work himself. He beat me, and I'm not going to say what else he did to me but you can probably guess what else he did to me," Klara said a little too calmly. "In 1907, I met a team of young 'wonders' from over a century in the future who tried to help me... And I freaked out when I saw Karolina and Xavin kissing," Klara admitted with a shameful expression. "I um... Had to unlearn some contemporary attitudes. And I ran away and went back 'home' where I was beaten nearly to death. I then made the choice that if I was going to be damned anyway I wanted to be damned with people who didn't want to hurt me while I was still alive and got back just in time to return to the future with them."

"...Turns out we ended up accidentally causing the gang war we were manipulated into going back in time to stop," Molly added. "Oops. And the messed up part was that the person who arranged for us to be sent back was there. She was a local girl that Victor hit it off with who regretted not going to the future with us when she had the chance and apparently didn't know she was the reason we went back in the first place and... Time loops are weird."

"...Tell me about it," Luz said nervously... She'd have to tell the others soon, but she still wasn't ready.

"Anyway, we figured out how he died—stabbed over a bar tab—and where he's buried recently so I'm going to get some closure. Other than that, however," Klara concluded, "I'd rather focus on happier things. Willow, you said you're... Basically, going to school exclusively to study magical plants? That must be so wonderful."

"Not exclusively, I do still have some electives," Willow said, "but yeah, it is..."

Luz tuned them out as they went off on their own side conversation once again and Molly went back to playing with assorted adorable little animals.

Luz suddenly had a lot on her mind that she didn't want to be thinking about, so when she noticed a lull in the conversation she spoke up. "So I don't think there's anything planned for us today, so, what's everyone doing later?"

"Well, Molly and I have our date later, " Klara added.

"It's Saturday, so there are no classes," Pei added. "So most of my free time goes to training."

"That's all you ever do, Pei," Gabby interrupted.

"I am the Iron Fist, guardian of Kun'Lun, and representative of the city among the Immortal Weapons," Pei lectured. "Beyond that, I am the youngest person to ever hold the position, only the fifth known woman to wield the chi of Sou-Lao, and only the second to be the Iron Fist officially. If I am to live up to the position and bring pride to my ancestors and predecessors, I need to be the best I can be. I've already mastered everything my Dad has taught me and what I've learned from the Book of the Iron Fist, but every Iron Fist before me has created new techniques or learned new styles. So I need to innovate too if I'm to live up to my responsibilities." The girl then smiled mischievously at Gabby. "Also, not all of us have healing factors that maintain our body's conditioning for us, Scout."

"Fair enough," Gabby replied with a laugh. "Anyway, April and I have a Clone Anon meeting in a couple of hours."

"Huh?" Hunter asked, suddenly snapping to attention.

"Clones Anonymous?" Gabby continued. "It's a support group for clones."

"You're clones?" Hunter asked in surprise.

"Yep!" Gabby replied. "I was made by an evil corporation and trained to be a soldier."

"Alchemax isn't an evil corporation, Gabby," April defended. "They just have some bad eggs who managed to squeak by from the Oscorp merger."

"You're just saying that becuase your dad is friends with the CEO," Gabby replied. "As far as I'm concerned it's only the astrobiology department that gets a pass and that's only because they make your pills. Anyway, yeah, we're clones."

"You're um, uh, pretty open about that," Hunter observed nervously. He glanced over the assembled group, pausing very slightly to see how Amity, Gus, and Willow reacted. Gus had an unnaturally straight face, which Luz made plans to circle back to later, and gears seemed to be turning in Amity's head.

"I mean, why wouldn't we be? We have the same rights as everyone else," Gabby said. "The circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are." The mutant girl recited.

Luz was about to call her out for the cliche and somewhat dated pop-culture reference when she noticed that the line had seemed to have a profound effect on not just Hunter but Vee as well.

"...Technically, we don't know that I'm the clone," April said. "I could be the orignal, but... It's not like it matters."

"...There's a story there," Luz found herself noting.

"When my Mom was pregnant, there were... complications," April started. "And afterward, she was told that the baby girl, who was going to be named May after our Great Aunt, was stillborn. That was a lie. My Dad... Had an archnemesis. He'd paid off a nurse to help him kidnap baby May. A clone was made almost immediately. One was taken to a facility where she was rescued by Uncle Kaine and brought back to our parents, and she grew up to be Mayday... The other was taken to a lab and experimented on, tortured, and... Raised to think that she was the real May Parker who'd been abandoned while a cheap copy stole her life. That one's me. There's no way of telling which is the clone, any defects in me that could prove that I'm a copy would either have been healed by being spliced with Venom's genetics or else been caused by that same experiment, and there's no way of even noticing those defects unless you have an original to compare it to so we can't check in Mayday. But again, it doesn't matter becuase I'm the one who needs the kind of help Clone Anon can give someone," April finished.

Luz's brain processed this bit of information quickly and drew a conclusion: "You know what, I think we're good."

"...What?" April asked.

"About what you did earlier," Luz continued. "I think we're good."

"No, we're not," April insisted. "I did something bad. I knew it was bad, it needed to be done but that doesn't mean it wasn't bad. I don't want your pity."

"It's not pity," Luz insisted. "It's... Look, I can't explain it but... Of course, you would have made a bad choice if that's where... This wasn't that long ago was it?" Luz asked. "I didn't even know there were more than two Parker kids until yesterday, so..."

"They found me last year. Took the better part of six months and two attempted murders before they got me sorted out," April confirmed. "Honestly I should probably be in prison, but... That doesn't... I'm sick of being treated with kid gloves by people who feel sorry for me."

"So for what it's worth," Amity said, "I still want to tear your head off. But Luz... She is genuinely one of the kindest, most empathetic people... Ever. This isn't kid gloves and pity, if she says you're good, she means it."

"Luz is pretty forgiving," Gus added.

"No one's that forgiving!" April snapped.

"The day we met I tried to have her dissected," Amity said. "Then the second time we met we got into a witch's duel where I seriously tried to hurt her. She still wanted to be friends with me afterward and now we're dating."

"I tried to kill her more than once," Hunter added, "and threatened to drown her little brother in the boiling sea."

"I almost ruined her chances of getting into Hexside and got her thrown into the detention pit becuase I was panicking about losing clout at the club I founded," Gus interjected.

"I peer pressured her into taking a house on a joyride because I was upset that I wasn't invited to a party thrown by someone I didn't even like at the time," Willow said.

"I stole her identity and impersonated her for three months," Vee finished.

"You know, when you put it that way..." Luz started... Now that she thought about it, her first meeting with her rother and her witch-mom was them holding her hostage to extort help with a heist.

April and her friends were sitting there slackjawed for a moment before April composed herself. "Okay, you know what if you say we're good I'm gonna take you at your word on that. Probably still gonna be grounded later, but... So yeah. Clones, why do you ask um... Hunter, right?"

Hunter paused, looked over the group again, and exhaled sharply. "I..." He reached into his pocket and withdrew a card. "I um, don't want to go into details right now, but... I'm a clone too. Kinda." Luz noted Gus's relative lack of surprise. "Yesterday, the Professor gave me a card with contact information for people who could help with... Clone issues, and..."

April looked at the card. "Yeah, this is us."

"...I was given one of those cards, too," Vee said while holding hers up. "I was cloned from a fossil so it's not like I'm a copy of someone exactly but... I was still made by someone who only wanted to study my kind and I was treated pretty badly there. The Professor said that people in this support group might be able to relate."

"...You guys want to come to the meeting with us?" Gabby asked.

"Yeah, I think so," Hunter said.

"Yes, please" Vee agreed.

"I um... It's not as big a deal as that," Amity began, "but... The Professor suggested that I... Write a letter I don't intend to send, addressed to someone I have unresolved issues with that I'll otherwise never get closure on becuase she's... Not around anymore. I'm probably going to do that this afternoon."

"...Yeah, I got nothing," Gus added. "I saw some interesting stuff in the history department that I want to ask about but other than that..."

"I'm curious about how a couple of plants in the human ream differ from their counterparts back home," Willow said. "Does this school's library have a botanical section?"

"Yes," Klara confirmed.

"And I have no idea what I'm doing today," Luz finished.

"Well I have a suggestion," came a voice from behind them that made half of them jump. Luz hadn't picked them up on her ESP since she wasn't currently tapped into it, but months of living with Hooty had given her remarkable resistance to jumpscares so she did not jump.

"He, um, Ms. Rasputina," Luz said while turning to greet her favorite mutant. "How's the investigation going?"

"Great," Magik said. "We managed to track the werewolf killer back to Taskmaster and at first he didn't want to tell us who hired him but when we mentioned the pattern he spilled becuase he might be an amoral mercenary but he's not evil, you know, nobody who isn't a megalomaniacal psychopath wasn't to be responsible for a super plague. Followed that to a dark elf alchemist, who said she was paid by dead drops to distill the essence of the curses. She didn't know what they were wanted for, but she suspects that whatever's gonna go down is gonna go down here," she finished. "Which is convenient. The Abbey's here and Johnny has a show in a few days he couldn't get out of. The Suns have contacted all the relevant authorities and we're prepared for the worst."

"Well, that's both good and bad to hear," Luz acknowledged.

"But that's not what I'm here to talk about," Magik continued. "Yesterday you said you'd like to join the support group I'm starting... Well, it kind of slipped my mind but the first meeting is today," Magik continued. "so, you still want to come? No pressure, but if you don't it's just gonna be me, the girl I told you about, and her friends."

Luz blinked. "Normally I'd be terrified at the prospect of meeting human teenagers without preparing first but I honestly have nothing better to do with my time, so sure."