Novel Toon
The XXX-Gene (Marvel)(Mutant OC)
Chapter 14: Making Rounds
Chapter 14: Making Rounds
A/N: Here's the new Chapter! Which also means the next four chapters are up on my Patreon for early access as well as the chance to vote on the direction of the story!
In which Thaddeus gets the lay of the land~
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… No. If Emma was right and he was surrounded on all sides by people who wanted a piece of him, then Thaddeus couldn’t just wait for them to come to him. Not only would he be ceding the advantage that making the first move would give him, but he would also be triggering all of their alarm bells, making them wonder if maybe HE was onto them. And sure, technically he was… but he didn’t need to let them know that.
Pushing off the bed, Thaddeus nods to himself as he gets his game face on, squares his shoulders, and finally braves the cold outdoors that is the hallway corridor right outside of his dorm room. He’ll just check in with everyone on his own floor, Thaddeus figures. That will be good enough for now, right?
Moving to his next door neighbor, Thaddeus hesitates only briefly before politely knocking… only to get absolutely no response. Blinking owlishly, Thaddeus leans in close and presses his ear to the door for a moment before pulling back in embarrassment and glancing to his left and right. Luckily no one is there to see him being a weirdo.
But also, in the moment that he pressed his ear to the door, Thaddeus confirmed something… there was actually nobody IN the room next to his. No sounds that would signal signs of life at all, in fact. He wasn’t quite up to the point that he could hear someone’s heartbeats yet, but he could actually usually hear breathing if he listened really, really closely.
With that in mind, Thaddeus goes to the next door and knocks on that one. No answer there either… but this time he does hear breathing. Slow, even breathing that makes him blush as he realizes whoever is inside is asleep. And apparently a deep enough sleeper that he didn’t accidentally wake them up. Good, that never made for a good first impression and even if everyone in this dormitory turned out to be spying on him, he didn’t want to make bad first impressions. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Letting out a sigh, Thaddeus checks the next door with his hearing ahead of time and after discovering that there are two people inside and they AREN’T asleep, he finally knocks. Only to almost immediately get the door answered by a bubbly brunette of all things.
“Oh! Hello there, handsome! What can I do for you?”
He half-expects her to comment about why a guy is in a girls-only dormitory in the first place and when she doesn’t, he’s immediately a little suspicious. But then, maybe he’s just being paranoid. Putting on his best smile, Thaddeus gives the cute brunette a flirtatious wink.
“Well, hello to you too, beautiful. My name’s Thaddeus and I was just getting the lay of the land, so to speak. My own room is three doors down, so I figured it only made sense to get to know my neighbors.”
Once again, he expects her to be surprised or SOMETHING by the fact that he’s just admitted he’s somehow rooming in a girls-only dormitory. But the brunette’s mega-watt smile barely flickers as she thrusts out a hand.
“Pleasure to meet you! I’m Kitty… Kitty Pryde! Always good to know your neighbors!”
As she chirps his own words back to him, Thaddeus carefully takes her hand and gives it a shake, now more suspicious of her than ever. But before he can say or do anything else…
“You smell good.”
“Holy shi-!”
He damn near jumps out of his skin as the second girl, who he’d KNOWN was in here but somehow lost track of, all but appears right at his side. She’s almost the polar opposite of Kitty in terms of personality, at least outwardly speaking. Her eyes are flinty, her gaze is piercing, and she has this expressionless look going on as she gets WAY too close and… and sniffs him.
“L-Laura! We talked about sniffing people, what the hell?!”
Kitty, of course, blanches and immediately grabs her roommate, this ‘Laura’ chick by the arm, yanking her back into the room and behind her. Laura doesn’t seem to want to go at first, but she does eventually, though her eyes never leave him. Seeming a little panicked now, Kitty gives off a nervous bout of laughter as she bows her head in apology to him.
“S-Sorry! She’s not normally like that, I swear! Good meeting you, Thaddeus!”
And with that she closes the door in her face. Thaddeus lifts an eyebrow, wondering if she would eventually realize that in her panic, she’d really been even ruder than her roommate had been. At least Laura’s weirdness had come with a compliment. Still… he’s not above wordlessly leaning forward and listening in for a second.
“What the hell was that Laura?! ‘You smell good’?! Are you trying to blow our cover?! Ya know, when the Professor gave me this mission, I went to bat for you to be allowed to take you along. D-Don’t ruin this for me, okay?!”
“… Sorry. But he’s still standing there if you want to try again.”
That’s all Thaddeus needs to hear to high tail it out of there. There’s a smile on his face as he moves on from that door, which he internally labels ‘X-Men Room’. Good to know that Professor Xavier hasn’t given up on recruiting him apparently… and it explains why Kitty clearly wasn’t very good at the whole clandestine spy thing. He got the impression that the X-Men ‘contingent’ weren’t really here to mess with him too badly, but rather to offer him an option whenever things went badly. Good for them, but Thaddeus had his own plans…
Still, if they were here from the X-Men, that meant both Kitty and Laura were probably mutants, didn’t it? And Thaddeus wouldn’t mind giving them both some boosts as part of a little quid pro quo… after all, the X-Men were the good guys, right?
Moving down the hall with a little bit more swagger in his step, Thaddeus eventually finds another room with people actually inside that will respond to his knocking. The door opens and he blinks at the sight of one of the most punk girls he’s ever seen waiting inside. Not just her either… behind her is a girl that’s practically just as punk, albeit with white streaks through her hair and pale skin. Second girl is more bordering on goth in fact, though Thaddeus will admit privately… he doesn’t know the difference.
“Sup, stud? You lost or something?”
The first girl makes a show of looking him up and down as she drawls that out and before Thaddeus can answer, she smirks wickedly and bats her lashes.
“Ya know, if you’re looking for your girlfriend’s room… you don’t have to keep looking. Would be happy to entertain ya instead~”
Behind her, the other girl in the room squawks at that, causing the first to laugh. Thaddeus just watches the exchange a little bewildered as the first pats his chest.
“Just playing with ya. I’m Risty. The easily offended one behind me is Anna Marie. What can we do for a handsome piece of meat like you?”
Even Thaddeus blushes a little at THAT one. Meanwhile, the pale girl now identified as Anna Marie is wringing her gloved hands together as she bites down on her purple-painted lower lip. Finally, Thaddeus manages to recover from the… overly aggressive opening. It’s not that he’s not used to some girls coming on strong, but admittedly there weren’t many punk or goth girls in the small town he’d grown up in. Though he had to admit… these two coeds were ROCKING the look.
“Heh, sorry for bothering you both… just getting the lay of the land and meeting my neighbors. The name’s Thaddeus and I’ll be in the room at the far end of this hall if you need anything.”
Risty’s eyes widen at that and then narrow in suspicion.
“Oh? We were told this dormitory would be women-only. That changed?”
Smiling sheepishly and spreading his hands apart, Thaddeus just shrugs.
“Don’t think so… probably just a mix-up. Maybe I’ll get moved eventually, but until that happens I promise to be on my best behavior.”
Risty’s narrowed look almost immediately morphs back into a raunchy grin at that.
“Oh? And what if we don’t want you to be on your best behavior, handsome?”
Thaddeus does what comes naturally… he grins right back at her and gives her a saucy wink in turn. This causes Risty to laugh and Anna Marie to blush profusely, even as the former grabs the edge of the door.
“Well… nice meeting you stud. We’ll see you around, I’m sure~”
Thaddeus nods and waves goodbye, before the door is closed on him… albeit less rudely than the last time. At the same time, he can’t help himself… he leans in close and listens intently.
“Y-Ya really think that he can help me with my mutation, ma?”
“I think it can’t hurt to try… or rather, it could if we’re not careful. I’m not saying you should go around letting him touch your bare skin any time soon, all things considered. But Destiny has seen some futures where his own powers might work beyond… purely physical contact. There might be things you can do without touching one another that count for the purposes of his mutation all the same.”
“… Alright ma. I’ll follow your lead.”
Thaddeus blinks rapidly as he steps away from that door. In his head, he doesn’t quite know what to label it. He feels like he should know… why the hell would Anna Marie be calling Risty ‘ma’? They were the same age, weren’t they? It’s on the tip of his tongue but he’s struggling to connect the dots at the moment. No… wait…
His eyes widen as he figures it out. They know about his ability to increase the powers of the women he sleeps with, something that even HE didn’t really know about until Natalie Rushman. The only person who could possibly know about that would be… Mystique. Was that why she’d run away like she had all those months ago?
Except she was apparently back now. Risty WAS Mystique, wasn’t she? And apparently she’d brought her… daughter along? To what, tug on his heart strings? He didn’t fully understand, but at least he could safely label their door as ‘Brotherhood of Mutants’. Though at this rate, wouldn’t it be more accurate to call them the ‘Sisterhood of Mutants’ if every single member he interacted with from the organization was going to be a woman?
Still, Thaddeus continues on. And finally, he comes to the very end of the hall and the last door before the stairwell. This time, when he knocks…
“Oh! Who could that be?”
“I don’t know, let’s find out shall we?”
The door opens and this time around it’s not one of the room’s occupants answering, but both. One of them is a cute, almost-mousy brunette with a twitching nose that gives away her enhanced sense of smell immediately, while the other is a blonde with short-cut hair who’s blue eyes slide up and down his body without hesitation.
Neither of them actually speaks up at first… instead they look at him expectantly, prompting Thaddeus to laugh and rub the back of his head.
“Err… sorry if I’m interrupting something. The name’s Thaddeus… I’m in the room at the opposite end of this hallway and I figured I’d go around and get to know all of my neighbors… the ones who are actually here and willing to answer the door, anyways.”
The two girls share a glance at that and then both try to speak at the same time.
“You weren’t interrupting any-!”
“The name’s Gwen-!”
They pause and look at each other again, before gesturing almost simultaneously.
“You go ahead-!”
“No, you go!”
The brunette blushes brightly as she gets in the last word, prompting Gwen to shrug her shoulders and look back at him with a wry grin.
“The name’s Gwen Stacy. Technically Gwendolyn, but I punched the last guy who tried to use that on me. This overexcitable fuzzball here is Doreen Green.”
Doreen lets out the cutest little squeak at being introduced by her roommate and hurriedly thrusts her hand forward, much to both Gwen and Thaddeus’ amusement. Nevertheless, Thaddeus takes ahold of it and gives it a solid shake, even as he wonders just what their game really is.
“Anyways, you weren’t interrupting anything too special… we were just getting to know each other.”
“T-That’s right! I was introducing Gwen here to my best friend in the whole wide world, Tippy-Toe!”
Thaddeus can’t help but raise an eyebrow at that, prompting Gwen to dryly jump in.
“Tippy-Toe is her pet squirrel.”
Which in turn causes Doreen to stomp her foot angrily.
“T-That’s not true, Gwen! I m-mean… Tippy-Toe IS a squirrel, but she’s not a pet! She’s actually quite smart and is a friend… a companion! I don’t OWN her or anything like that.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Gwen rolls her eyes but has a somewhat amused smile on her face that shows she finds Doreen’s antics endearing rather than annoying.
“At least you can acknowledge that owning a squirrel as a pet would be a problem, I suppose.”
Recognizing that she’s being teased, Doreen just huffs at that, puffing up her cheeks in a rather striking impression of… well, a squirrel. Thaddeus could easily believe the girl had a pet squirrel in fact. Though… he couldn’t quite figure out what her or Gwen’s deal actually was. They were doing an exceptional job of acting like they hadn’t known each other before today, before becoming roommates. But did Thaddeus really believe that? Even if he didn’t… what could he really do about it?
“That said…”
Gwen’s voice is suddenly speculative, drawing him out of his internal contemplation as the blonde looks him up and down again and gives him a flirtatious grin.
“We WERE just getting to know each other… and if you want you could… join in on that, handsome.”
Her sultry, seductive tone makes Doreen squeak, the squirrel-like girl clearly picking up on what Gwen was putting down just as quickly as Thaddeus had. But far from rejecting the idea, Doreen takes one look at him… and nods her head up and down enthusiastically, clearly just as interested.
The only problem is, Thaddeus still has no idea who these two are or what they’re doing here. Clearly they’re not normal… but who are they working for? Technically he might be able to find out by taking Gwen up on her offer… but he also might be walking right into a trap by entering their dorm right now.
Was it really worth it? Or was he better off playing it safe for the time being and just… letting Gwen down gently for now?
Thaddeus considers his options for a moment before opening his mouth to respond.
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The Patreon Vote:
[ ] Join the two girls in 'getting to know each other' (Sex not guaranteed) - 36%
[X] Politely decline and head back to his room (Sex guaranteed, but mystery option visit) - 64%
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