wings ↣ w. worthington iii

1. mutations before vacations, apparently ✓

"It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were... seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman's life is that?" (A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf)

Word Count: 1758

LILLI PLAYED WITH THE ENDS of her blonde hair nervously. She was downstairs in a lab, being examined by a nice man named Hank. He looked completely normal, and Lilli couldn't help but wonder what his mutation was. Was he super smart? Or super strong? Maybe he could fly. The possibilities were truly endless.

"So you just... turn invisible?" Hank was asking Lilli for around the seventh time. He looked up from his clipboard, where he had been jotting down notes.

"Yes." Lilli answered for the seventh time, nodding her head.

"Including your clothes?" Hank asked, looking back down at his clipboard and scribbling some more.

"Yes."

"Can you make other things turn invisible with you?"

"No."

"Can you make other things turn invisible on their own?"

"No."

"So, just to recap, you can only turn yourself and whatever's on you at the time invisible?"

"Yes." Lilli said, trying to keep the exasperated tone out of her voice. She hated this feeling— this feeling that she was a specimen. As Hank quieted and wrote more things down, Lilli looked around the large, all white lab. It was lit up with bright, artificial lights and smelled of chemicals. There were tables holding vials of liquid and microscopes. Along the walls hung posters of different diagrams and other nerdy, science-y things. It was definitely an interesting place to spend one's time, Lilli decided. She couldn't guess why Hank seemed to like it down here so much. Maybe she could buy him some decorations to make the place a little nicer.

"Okay. I'm ready to see it," Hank said after another moment of fast scribbling. He looked up at her eagerly, immediately unintentionally putting a lot of pressure on Lilli. She still wasn't good at turning invisible on command, and having to perform it in front of a stranger only made Lilli feel more anxious.

Lilli pushed her anxiety away and concentrated on the bright lights washing away the shadows in the room, and pretended she was as invisible as the shadows were. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, concentrating as hard as she could on turning invisible. After a moment, she felt the familiar tingling sensation that preceded her invisibility. Lilli opened her eyes and looked down to see the now-familiar sight of her translucent body. Lilli noticed with pleasure that even her backpack was in the same translucent state as she was.

"Alright. Good, good, excellent," Hank muttered as he scribbled things down on his clipboard. "Can you see yourself?"

"Um.. yeah, kind of. I look translucent," Lilli replied, holding out her arm and looking through it at the lab behind it. Hank nodded and continued writing more. Lilli held the invisibility for another moment before it spazzed out. She sighed in frustration, her shoulders involuntarily slouching.

"Lilli, we will work with you on keeping the invisibility up longer, and making it come and go easily," Professor Xavier said to Lilli after he noticed her frustration. He was sat next to Hank, reading the notes that Hank was making. "It will take time, but I'm confident you will be able to do it."

"Okay." Lilli said, looking down at her feet as she thought about it. Being able to control her mutation would be amazing. She would be able to return to the normal human world and get away from the savage mutants.